Lucky Pierre Brings Me to the Dam

Looking for an adventure, Mformi Reese and I decided to investigate a lake on the Ndop Plain. When heading northward from Bamenda towards Kumbo, you climb over the mountain near Sabga and descend into the Ndop Plain. From the crest of the last hill, just before the bush taxi begins to roll faster than its breaks could stop it, you can see Lake Bamendjin. There are hardly any lakes in my area of the NW, and none that I've actually seen. For a long while I thought this enormous expanse of glistening water was a brain trick…the sun shining off corn or beans. Through a bit of research, I discovered that it is all water and that it is a man made reservoir stopped up by a dam.


It seemed from the map that part of the lake was very near to the ring road, and so we left Bafut very early on a clear Sunday morning and dropped in Bamali hoping to be at the lake in an hour to do some fishing and beer drinking. According to Mr. Rogers, the motorcycle driver at car park, Bamenjin was very far and the road was very bad… but he would gladly take us for 12,000cfa because his village is halfway between Bamali and the lake. We bartered and got him to 7,000 and started on our dirt road moto ride. As he lied about the price of petrol and how many liters he would need, I assumed that the trip could not be nearly as long as he had speculated.



We set off, but about an hour later I was beginning to believe that the "Lucky Pierre" seat on the moto is neither lucky nor having anything to do with French cheese. But the landscape was beautiful and the sky was enormous and blue… and we were soon to be lounging in a boat, sipping warm Cameroonian suds. We rode for an hour before reaching Mr. Rogers' village … he said we were halfway, and that the rest of the road was very bad. My spirits waned a bit, but then we got to see 1995 tribal war torn area of Bali Kumban and I was feeling adventurous again.



As we crossed a bridge a little while later, Mr. Rogers exclaimed that we have, "just entered the West Province!!". Surprise! No idea. We had in no way thought we would be crossing provincial lines… this could only mean that we've traveled…. Really very far in a very strange direction. Just go with it. .I smiled, trying to be hopeful, and we continued. We finally were dumped off the bush road onto a nice, wide dirt road and endedn the town of Bamenjin.. nearly two hours and 15 minutes later and on the other side of the lake. Mr. Rogers excitedly took us up to the reservoir we wanted to see so badly (he must have thought we were nuts)… the dam we wanted to see. He had driven us halfway across the Northwest province, into another province (on a Sunday!) to see the Bamenjin Dam. It's a stinking dam, too. We got to go through security and put on white hard hats and get a tour from a guy that only spoke French. Took a few pictures, had some achu for lunch, and headed back towards the ominous, black rain clouds at Ndop.



I wanted adventure… total surprise is what I got. We were even plotted against. Some boys wanted to rob us on the road… but they didn't realize we were strong as oxs and were taking the bush road like a real Cameroonian villagers. Reese even saw a green snake. Sunburned and feeling like I rode on a yahoobuckaroo trail ride for 4 hours, we're eating grilled fish and drinking beer on the couch and feeling no remorse about not fishing yesterday…

And sometimes the King just comes over for dinner...

The Fon of Bafut came over for dinner last night. When I agreed to have him over, I had imagined making hamburgers and French fries. When I proposed this to my favorite queen, Marie, she agreed that a nice American dish would be suitable… and should be accompanied with fried plantain, boiled yellow yam, tomato fish stew, fried chicken, French style bread, njama njama, fruit and at least two Amstels. I invited Reese to come and help me prepare and for support in making conversation with one of the bigger celebrities of Cameroon. He suggested fried okra would also be nice.



Well, the burgers fell apart on the grill and my pressure cooker spat water and steam from the side at 10 pounds of pressure, so things didn't go terribly smoothly… but after two bottles of wine, the table was set and I was feeling very calm. He arrived in a black cloak, pulled out the Harvard mug the US ambassador had given him and sat down in my rocking chair… he was nervous that it might tip right backward. I think they kill you if your chair makes the Fon fall. Topics included the beating of children in the school environment and my very poisonous, magic-laden chameleon (Kate and I caught a little chameleon walking back to Mambu… his name is Clunky's Best Machine Gun). At the table, he ate two hamburgers and we drank another bottle of wine… and I began to argue (with a king) about definitions of Western culture and (seem to always bring it up with important Cameroonians) the legality of homosexuality in the States, using arm flailing to express the absolute conviction (the wine) of my opinions. He enjoyed the Jell-o Lemon Pudding Pie (thanks to Reese's aunt) and fruit that topped off the evening. They got up and left fairly suddenly…. Its possible he didn't want to tinkle at my house. After reaching the palace, Marie told him she was going to bed but she snuck out and was on my front porch 10 minutes later. She came to pick up leftovers and finish off the fruit and gossip a bit about the night. She felt it went very well and was only surprised that he ate the pie… he usually feels sweets are for babies. I used every dish in the house and had to have another bottle of wine after the he went home, but it was certainly a memorable evening.



We didn't get a photo, but Reese said its cooler not to have one.

Clunky's Best Machine Gun

Clunky's Best Machine Gun
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

Shaking of the Chickens

Queens coming out party
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

"Washing" of the masses

Washing of the masses
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

Palatial Confusion, Nseh

“If you kids don’t quiet down, we won’t bring back the sun.” –PCV Reese, on the 4th of July to a group of extremely excited Cameroonian kids experiencing their first firework display


The Fon of Nseh had a palace stooge stuff a note under Reese’s door around 6:30 in the morning on Wednesday. The enveloped note was addressed to “Nformi” Reese and stamped multiple times. Cameroonians are obsessed with the rubber stamp. For 3000 francs, or six US dollars, someone will meticulously carve anything you want backwards into a piece of old tire the size of a ritz cracker. For 3000 francs, you create absolute authenticity. Contrastingly, if you don’t have something stamped, there is a good chance it ain’t real. For instance, my friend Ally in Ndu received a stack of certificates for completing a series of health seminars (Cameroonians also love certificates… whether its for spending eight years in nursing school or for touring the local Guiness factory, they’re framed and propped up somewhere prominent). When the certificates arrived unstamped from the Peace Corps office, a coworker refused to accept them as more than just a meaningless piece of paper, despite the fact that they were signed by PC administrators.

The note under the door was an invitation to the Saturday graduation of three queens from the palace. In Nseh, there are multiple queens. However, the queens are not the wives of the Fon (there are also multiple wives). As I understand it, they are the daughters of the royal family who are chosen at a very young age to serve in place if the Fon should die or become busy with major village matters… like goats-gone-rampant or infiltration of petit sized beers. Or the World Cup. We weren’t quite sure what the graduation was to entail. I don’t think we ever found out, but it ended up being quite a Saturday.

The invitation had not included a time (though it was not forgotten that any financial gift would be welcome), so we figured 9am. Also invited was the Al-hajji from Reese’s quarter, and he suggested 10 (he also has a truck), so we decided that was better. We packed into the front seat of truck with five or so Muslims smashed into the seat behind around 11. On the road, Reese was able to pick through a Lamso’ conversation enough to understand that someone went at 8am and ate at the palace and that we might be absurdly late. But when we arrived at the palace, someone said we were early. Really, it’s almost always like this.

We started in one dilapidated room next to the main palace courtyard. There is a small stage in the room that is royally adorned with shiny Korean-made Christmas decorations and a plastic lawn chair covered in brown tapestry. Above the throne are framed pictures of the half-naked, traditionally dressed Fon, President Paul Biya and Micheal Bolton (okay, not MB, but it would be so funny and it’s not completely out of the question!). There are benches around the perimeter of the room where various members of the Fondom sit, somewhat ordered by rank. When you enter the room, clan members greet the empty throne with the standard three claps in prostration, then the declaration of “Mbe” into their clasped hands.

They brought in a huge clay jar and put it in the middle of the room. I’ve been to the Nseh palace some four times now, and so I’m quite familiar with the routine. Reese pulls out his special horn-shaped cup in perfect synchronicity with the other Old Farts while raffia wine is poured into the huge jar. I guess women are not supposed to drink from anything phallus-shaped… we instead drink from bulbous calabashes (or in my case, plastic cups of varying colors and cleanliness). Then anyone with a drinking vessel (who isn’t Muslim) waits his or her turn to take the white stuff (or the white-ish stuff, in the case of gritty corn beer). They pull the wine from the jar with a two-holed calabash. The men are expected to take and take and take. The wine-pourer will stand in front of Reese, fill the horn held in his right hand (that he respectfully supports with his left), he drinks the whole horn quickly (still supporting his right with his left), then places the cup out again (and breathes). It is refilled, and the act is repeated. Two or three times he drinks like this, before waving off the stooge and resting with a horn full of wine. If you don’t do it like this, I guess you’re some kind of wuss, not fit to have two spears or something like that. I guess I’ll never really understand. I knew it was a big day when the two boxes of Baron de Madrid were brought out. Baron is the grape-juice tasting wine beverage that is often mixed with orange Fanta. It’s really awful, but it means big things when you see the yellow box.

Sometimes they have snacks. Old men crunch on bitter pink kola nuts (apparently, some old guys have so few teeth that they have to grate the kola first) and one time there was a bucket of steaming corn kernels (you only get corn when somebody dies, though). The last time we sat in that room, a crazy old francophone came over and gave Reese and I a piece of folded-up banana leaf tied with some brown twine. He told us we could share it’s contents and mumbled some other things. We didn’t open it until we got back to Reese’s house, but when we did, it was empty. Like I said, craaazy.

On my second cup of Baron, the Fon came out and sat in the plastic chair. We all stood, clapped and “Mbe’d” while he sat down. He said some stuff, then there was awkward royal silence, and then he got up and left. Alllright.

So, we continued to drink. After a while, we were brought down into the main palace courtyard, where the council meets and the Fon has a bigger throne. A big, painted rocking chair and a strew of wooden statues, stools, tables and pillars decorate this throne (far less chintzy than the other). The courtyard has a sort of veranda that goes all the way around. In the middle of the courtyard are two stones I figured were for decapitations… this was not a correct assumption, I was told. The part of the veranda closest to the Fon’s throne is lined with around twenty semi-flat, stout stones where the council members are supposed to sit. In a country with (I have heard) a good deal of hemorrhoid problems, this doesn’t seem like the best arrangement for old guys. Ah, tradition! We sat farther back in the courtyard on a wooden bench. I thought the “graduation” would be commencing, but a side door opened and fufu and cow meat appeared and we ate from Christmas plates. When we finished eating with our right hands, we washed them (while Reese has perfected his fufu eating and upon finishing has the stuff sticking only to the tips of his fingers, I tend to get it all over my hand and halfway up my arm… but I am a formidable opponent when it comes to the single-fingered achu eating) and were ushered back to the other room. Back and forth and back and forth. Just relax, go with it.

So, we continued to drink. After a number of glasses of Baron, I went to find a place to “ease myself”. I cut through a neighboring courtyard, this one bordered by blackened doorways. I had found the quarters where the palace-women sleep and cook. Innumerable children with faces very similar to the Fon’s watched me cross the dusty square and cut through a muddy alley (wearing strappy orange stilettos, mind you) to the path leading to some royal latrines. When I popped out of the injurious alleyway, a naked granny, squatting and washing herself among the stalks of corn, greeted me. “Wi ka ju! Wi ka ju, ohhhhh! Beri! Beri! Beri!” she yelled, cocking her head and pressing her hands together, then placing them against her floppy chest, then together again. I squint, smile broadly and nod. “Heeey, ho… ha. Thanks, mama. Thanks. Yep,” I said, my heels erratically sinking into the soft pathway. She was not just buck naked, but also toothlessly grinning… as were the other three Old Mommys lining the path to the latrine. I was bombarded by thank yous and enthusiasm… “Beri! Beri! Way-ohhhhhh! Wha! Wha! Wha!” Seeing naked old women is nothing new (I used to go to the YMCA), but I can’t say it’s a preference. But they were just so damned excited that I forced myself to exhibit nothing put contentment (while nearly wetting myself). I reached the latrines in my orange stilettos, peed and turned back. They were still there... still naked and toothless… still incredibly happy to see me. What did I even do? Laughing and shaking my head, I walked back to the courtyard.

We were moved back to the chintzy throne room, and there was more Baron, raffia wine and corn beer to be had. It was nearly two o’clock now, and it didn’t seem like anything was going to happen. Al-hajji was sleeping, his head bent backward and mouth gaping open. It was bustling outside… it seemed locals were arriving in droves for this graduation (we still have no idea exactly what the graduation is). We were ushered again, this time into the black door courtyard. A few hundred of the Nseh population were lining the perimeter. We were asked to squat down… and after the masses got low, a queen entered carrying a calabash of white wine and a handful of green leaves. She plunged the leaves in the wine, and proceeded to hurl them sideways, forcefully flinging a deluge of starchy wine onto the squatters. She went all the way around…I received a refreshing blow of wine to the ear, and then a good quantity of the next guy’s “cleansing” along my right side, leaving a Aquanet like stickiness in my hair for the remainder of the event. Reese caught a piece of magic wine-heaving leaf… which caused everyone around to “ooo” at Nformi Reese’s good fortune. Means something great is going to happen. I saw another guy with a piece of leaf limply hanging out of his ear. I thought it looked gross… and wondered if gross-looking luck held the same value.

Reese’s neighbor convinced us there was an intermission and that we should go to a bar up the road. There we shared an enormous bottle of corn beer while it rained, then headed back to (probably) wait some more. But we could hear the drums and singing as we approached. I was mildly angry that we had listened to Godlove, and maybe missed the party, but we entered the black door courtyard in a flurry of activity. And when I say flurry, I mean they were holding chickens by the legs and whipping them around over their heads. It was like chicken shot-put without letting go. There were others flailing horse tail brooms, beating drums, the green-feathered-headed jujus out doing their thing, women circling and thrusting decorated spears into the air. I leaned against the wall and watched quietly… trying not to look interested enough that I would be dragged into the dance and be the token foolish looking white man. Reese, who has danced with the jujus on multiple occasions, moved fearlessly around the periphery in his red bubu, taking “snaps” and fighting the urge get down with the jujus.

There was more palm wine with other toothless old women before we left in Al-hajji’s truck. We didn’t go back directly, though… we passed to what I can only call an “afterparty,” held at the Queen Mothers house. This included more palm wine, fufu corn and njama njama. After they filled my plate with the fufu stuff, they brought us our own special dish of baby potatoes and cooked cabbage. Luckily I didn’t have to try and sneak cabbage into my purse or throw it under a bed while no one was looking… we were given a to-go wrapper. No one talked much in a language I understood, so I spent my time at the house pondering exactly what was just celebrated and inspecting Old One-Eyed Pa’s wood carved cane. Doesn’t take much to have a party, I guess… or maybe it was a really big deal. I don’t know if I’ll ever have an inner gauge to tell me what the heck is going on in Cameroon.

Again, not really having any idea what was happening, we were shuffled back in the truck with Al-hajji and (finally) driven back to Mbogwem in the rain. Back in the fairly predictable respite of Reese’s Little America, we played Louis Armstrong on the iPod, added Oscar Meyer bacon bits to the cabbage and potatoes and ate them with Tabasco sauce.

4th of July -- Africa style

fireworks in Kumbo
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

I thought that a rampaging juju was the fastest way to get African children to run screaming, but boy was I wrong.

Bamenda wedding

jude mary wedding cake
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

A truly high-brow affair for all the top-shelf cats in Small Mankon-Bamenda for the daughter of the sister of Alhaji Usmaila. The invitation in fact said "Mary, you are the bone of my bones."

Movie Poster

Kelsey Movie Poster
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

There's already a lot of Golden Globe buzz surrounding this week's straight-to-VCD launch of "Black Vampire".

kelsey's house side

kelsey's house side
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

If you look closely you can just make out the world-famous "Hollywood" sign in the distance.

My New House

kelsey's house front
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

I have recently transferred to Posh Corps Cameroon complete with refrigerator, track lighting, French doors, and complementary Volvo washing service.

I Dey fo Town

Let me start by saying that it was not a very difficult decision. I’m sure some of you might think I’m cold-hearted for leaving and participating in the “massive rural exodus,” as one nice lady told me, but to be downright cliché, I think its for the greater good.

So, out of the village, into the city. Kinda.

I have moved to Bafut Central, Home of the Bafut Beagles (I live about 50 yards as the crow flies from Gerald Durrel’s old German-built Cameroonian-standards castle…. My mother really wanted me to move there, but I told her it’s a museum now. “So what,” she said.).

With the help of around 4 very excited palace stooges, I found a lovely little pink duplex behind the palace. It’s a very close walk to the rear gate, but you unfortunately have to go around some “sacred forest” that’s been unchanged for a whole lot of years. I was told that I could go into the forest, but that I would never come out. Haha… he. Ha. Hmm. Damn right I’m not going in there.

The moment I saw the house with its big square front porch, I knew I was going to have a lot of screen to put up. I made mental plans for cane patio furniture and one of those copper dish things that you put wood in. I noticed the wires coming into the house on the left side. My eye was next drawn to the grey plastic piping that rose up from the ground like a hand of God holding recently dated photos of Elvis, Diana and John John drinking pina coladas in Nauru. Sewer ventilation. There’s a toilet inside. Splendid.

After getting the keys from the oafish landlady, we took a stroll through the house. It’s a simply enormous two-bedroom with all the civilized amenities. Walking into the nicer of the two bedrooms, I noticed something scuttle away on the far wall. This was the one problem with the house. It seems that because no one had ever lived here and the house had stood for two years, the door was open for man-eating insects and skinks. The tarantula living in my bedroom was a very clear indicator of this. This was the first tarantula I have seen in Cameroon (my friend Liz is never going to visit), and though it was kind of neat, it would have been neater if it had been outside (far far far away).

No big deal, though… get the landlady to clean the place. I’m sure she’ll take care of it. But like I said before, she’s kind of oafish. As far as I can tell, she cleaned the windows. Upon moving in, the tarantula was still residing in my room. Because the movers were right there (it cost be 10 US dollars and 8 Cameroonian beers to have 4 guys come and take two trucks worth of stuff out of my house and then move it in), I decided to temporarily move into the back room. When I spotted its three inch long legs poking out from between the ceiling and the wall, I fetched one of my sweaty men and had him broom it to death. I ran away from the curling ball of fur and hid on top of the table. They thought this was funny, and one ass said that this one was “smaller than the other one.” “What do you mean other one?!” I asked. “This one is the junior brother to the other one,” he said laughing. He then told me (unconvincingly) that he was joking.

That night, despite my being a hallway away and underneath a poisonous bug net, I slept something awful, but I awoke with new courage. I walked up to the door, and entered slowly with my body contorted in such a way that my head could be looking upward while I inched forward. As soon as my eyes passed the frame of the door, I saw the furry, three-inch legs arched up in 8 inverted “v”s. It For a second, I could have sworn his black, compound eyes were scowling at me. He was directly above my head, not more than a foot and a half. I only wish the next moments were captured on my Cirque de Soleil audition video. I was already violently twisted… my lightning-fast retreat may have included several back flips and perhaps teleportation. Either way, I ended up on all fours on top of my dining table.

After an attic spraying, the mammal-like insect was viciously slaughtered by my neighbor boy, Kennedy. I missed the thing’s quick scurry down the wall, and only caught the crushing broom blows that finished him on the hallway floor. In two days, I managed to abandon a needy community and had some possibly rare creatures brutally slain. I feel my life in Africa has just become blissfully sustainable, though a little bit more Posh Corps.