Voyage to Paradise

What adventures I am having! I had quite an exciting weekend again. However, I must start by telling you about Limbé. Wouldn’t want you to be confused about the order of events.

We get one excursion per semester with the program, and ours happened to fall on Thanksgiving. So that Thursday, we travelled to the coast, to explore Anglophone Cameroun, and spend some time at the beach. To get you oriented, here is a map of Cameroon:

Courtesy of wikitravel.org

Yaoundé you see in the center, a bit south-west. Limbé is on the coast, west past Douala (Douala is the economic capital, with one of the biggest ports in Central Africa. It was such an important port that the colonizers fought over control of Cameroon just for Douala). Anglophone Cameroon is the lump sticking out on the left. The two beach vacation spots in Cameroon are Limbé and Kribé; I have yet to make the comparison, but Limbé was pretty much perfect. Also, there was hot running water in the hotel! And what’s more, drinkable water! Beach + hot water = paradise (our drôle French friend who joined us for the trip said also that air conditioning was the best invention of man, after woman and hot water).

Paradise.

The road trip itself was quite interesting, I always love getting out of the city to see more of what I think of as real African life (although what real life anywhere is I have yet to find out). I talked about agriculture a few posts ago, and this trip expanded my perspective quite a bit. Particularly in the west, there are many, many plantations, largely leftover from German control and taken over by (in the Anglophone part anyway) the British. The soil is super fertile due to Mount Cameroon, which is a volcano (which also meant that the sand on the beach was black). We saw many banana plantations, palm plantations, and took a mini tour of a rubber plantation: caoutchouc, which is a lot like maple syrup tapping:

Banana plantation

Rubber tree! The white "blood" is then taken to be processed and made into rubber.

The problem is that most of these crops don’t benefit the people of Cameroon. Despite the fertile soil, there remain starving people in the region, because most of the agriculture is for export. The money for these crops likely goes to a select few who are in the business or in government, not the actual workers, who live in houses like this:

We also saw a market near the Nigerian border, of a certain kind of leaf that mostly only grows here… but gets exported to Nigeria. We weren’t supposed to take pictures (more because of delicate army operations in the area surrounding the Bakassi region, which is in dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria largely due to its oil resources)...

Then finally, the beach! No words can describe how much I love la plage: waves, sand, coconuts… Magnifique! We ate poisson braisé that night for dinner right on the beach.  

Nom. Eat with fingers, and spit out the bones.

The next day, we visited Bimbia, which is the site of the first missions in Cameroon. This was Protestant, built by Joseph Merrick in 1844. Missions really began colonization, preparing the people for Western takeover (okay, I’m a little cynical, but  I think within reason).

The Group. Cameroonians are obsessed with taking photos.

The same area was a slave trade post. We learn a lot about the history of slavery in the U.S., but to see the other end was something not a lot of people get to experience. According to our professor, slaves from Cameroon weren’t well liked because they were stubborn and aggressive. This personality type was manifested again in the struggle for independence, as Cameroon was the only sub-Saharan state in Africa to have a war for independence.

Nature has taken over where they used to hold auctions, with people chained to a post. Unbelievable. 

Saturday we hiked up Mont Cameroun (it hasn’t been spewing lava for a few years, don’t worry). We didn’t go all the way to the summit, because that takes a few days and you have to be fit and with gear for the cold, etc., but even so it was quite a hike! I was enormously happy to be in nature again, exploring the tropical forest, doing something physical (I have been losing lots of muscle here—particularly after my summer of not having a car and biking everywhere, hooray for the Yellow Bike Club—Cameroonians don’t like to walk very much and it’s hard to find the time to faire du sport). Afterwards we went again to the beach, lots of body surfing, and we even rode horses (although, they were rather recalcitrant and not entirely worth it). A good time was had by all.

Mont Cameroun: le Char des Dieux (this is higher up, above the forest line - the terrain changed a lot as we went up)

Finally we had to leave. On the way back we passed again the point of reunification of the two Cameroons. Anglophones in Cameroon do have some minority issues – how they don’t get profit from the fertile agriculture of the region, for example. Also we found that most the Anglophones also spoke French pretty well, while many Francophones don’t speak much English, although the country is supposed to be perfectly bilingual. We stopped in Douala to eat a fantastic Senegalese lunch at the house of an aunt of one of the students (might have been my favorite meal here). In Douala, we also visited a couple monuments, such as the statue of General Leclerc, a French general who helped control Cameroon. There are almost no monuments of Cameroonian nationalists, but many of the French, showing how the influence continues. The British were better (if there is a better) colonizers than the French, because they always knew that the colonies would be independent one day, while the French wanted to keep her empire. To this day, Cameroonians talk extensively on the continued impact of France on the country, particularly economically, giving proof to the notion of néo-colonialsme. Also, it was fascinating to see the leftovers from German rule, because we don't talk much about German colonies—well-made bridges that still exist, and of course the plantations—apparently the Germans are good at making things last.

I almost cried on the way home because we had to leave and go back to the city. Maybe I can find a way to return over Christmas break.