Baffled in Bafut

           During training my friends and I lived in a town named Bafia. I’m currently living just outside Bamenda and have friends surrounding the (noisy and dirty) city of Bafoussam. Their posts include Batie, Bapi, Bassosia, and Babadjou. Notice anything? Many of the towns and cities in the Western Highlands (and parts of the rest) of Cameroon begin with the BA- prefix. As far as I understand, this prefix means “people of” in one of the native languages. This past weekend a few friends and I headed over to Bafut, which is one of the remaining major fondoms (traditional kingdoms) in the immediate vicinity.

            As luck would have it, one of Cynthia’s Cameroonian friends happens to be a Bafut princess and she offered to bring her out to see the palace. She has been making this offer for the duration of Cynthia’s service, and given the rate at which her COS (close-of-service) date is approaching, she finally accepted. Cynthia extended the invitation to a few others, and in the end there were five of us piling into a taxi headed to Bafut. Given the size of our party we were hoping that we could “flop” (fill) a taxi ourselves, but it was of course not to be. We found a taxi with only one other passenger and headed off.

            I had never been to Bafut before, but it wasn’t far at all ($0.80 cab ride/person) and the trip out took less than a half hour. So less time than it takes to get across Bamenda at rush hour. But that’s a different story. As uncomfortable as driving in Cameroon can be, the scenery more than makes up for it (usually). We drove through a few small villages but for the most part the trip consisted of green hillsides, palm trees, and red dirt paths.  

            A local prince and princess met us, although I didn’t learn whether or not they shared the same mother. As it turns out, polygamy is still widely practiced in many parts of Cameroon and particularly in traditional cultures. Many fons take as many as 40 or more wives, and when a fon dies his successor typically inherits his father’s remaining wives. I can’t remember how many wives the fon of Bafut currently has but we learned that the immediate past fon had about 85 and over 500 children. At this point in the tour I began to wonder what percentage of the Bafut population are technically either a prince or princess.  This was not a question that I felt comfortable asking our tour guides, especially after the tour begun. A large percentage of the stops on the tour were former torture sites. We saw the beheading rocks, (there were two: a large one for men and a slightly smaller one for women) the site of sacrifice, (formerly human, changed to animal after German colonial influence) and a few other places of general misery.

            Just as I was beginning to wish I had never come to Bafut, we entered the inner gates and got our first real look at life inside the palace compound. Most of the space was taken up by many small buildings that housed the fon’s wives. If you didn’t know that all these women shared the same husband, it almost felt like any other small Cameroonian village. There were kids scrubbing dresses and women preparing meals. Given that the palace is a touristic site (our guide told us that it is a UNESCO World Heritage site) the children were more polite than I’m used to and not a single one of them yelled “white man!” as we passed. It was a nice surprise.

            The highlight of the tour came when we entered the innermost gate and got to see the shrine to royal ancestors. The square building was covered in totem poles and the roof was made up of the thickest layer of thatch that I have ever seen. We weren’t allowed inside, (the fon is allowed to enter as he wishes and his queens and princesses are allowed once per year) but it was quite stunning from the outside. After this highlight I was ready to head back to Bamenda, but it was not yet to be. We were first escorted through the Bafut museum, where we saw and heard about what must have been every item the Bafut fons throughout history ever touched. Luckily there have only been nine fons (although they stretch back as far as the 1500s), so the tour eventually finished and we grabbed a taxi back to Bamenda.

           

My work projects continue to be moving slowly; I’m beginning to realize that this is typical of Cameroon and trying not to let it frustrate me. In the meantime, I’m trying to stay busy in other ways. I started taking French lessons a few weeks ago (my teacher’s name is Debonnaire-not making that up) and have resumed my tennis lessons after a two-month break following my accident. I’ve also tackled some of the home-improvement projects that I had been putting off. I now have a fully functional dining room (although it’s on the balcony-al fresco dining is in my future!) and contracted a counter extension for my kitchen so I have enough room to cook. This being Cameroon, neither of these tasks proceeded as I would have expected them to, but I’m optimistic that both will be a success.

Another cultural difference: in America, my neighbors take their dogs for walks. In Cameroon, my neighbors take their goats for walks (on leashes).

TL,DR: Traditional kingdoms still exist in Cameroon and some of them have even been labeled as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. If you ever choose to visit them, be prepared for the likely possibly of practicing polygamists and former sites of human sacrifices.