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on Notes from Quite Far (Cameroon), 28/Feb/2009 11:21, 34 days ago
This weekend, I went hippo-spotting in the town of Maga, on Lake Maga, a lake famous for its hippos, with 2 experienced hippo guides, both expert in tracking and spotting hippos.And did I see any hippos?Yes I did!!Just for a change, I actually saw the animal I set out to see, and which people told me I would see.I had an amazing weekend all round actually. Had to start late on Friday afternoon, because we had yet another big ceremonial assembly on Friday morning. Students start their teaching placements next week, so Friday was a pre-placement meeting much like the last pre-placement meeting, except I took a book this time.On Friday afternoon we went in search of a driver to take us to Maga. Since it was Friday, afternoon prayer lasted a long time but eventually we met up with Abatcha, a driver who is friends with a shopkeeper we know at the market. Lucky for us he was available, since the other option would have been a bush taxi– i.e. as many people as physically possible crammed into/onto anything that hasn’t yet fallen completely apart. We passed 2 broken down bush taxis during the Maga trip. One had lost an entire axel and its passengers were all long gone. (Which is to say they had long since found a different means of transport, not that they had died.) Abatcha took 3 of us – myself, Grahame and Sid from Kaele - in a spacious jeep along pot-holed dirt track roads. The scenery and wildlife we saw was great, but probably the best bit was passing the villages. People living on the main tarmac roads are used to seeing cars, but along the dirt road, children would come running out to wave. When they saw that we were not only in a car but also white, some of them went positively giddy.(Is that…? But how…? Why…? The answers to those three questions are probably best answered by email.)I felt closer to a being a tourist this weekend than I have since I arrived. There isn’t really a tourist industry as such here in Cameroon, but there are people who visit for work or other reasons, and so there is tourism of sorts. Abatcha has something of a sideline going as a tour guide, and he takes his foreigners (“mes étrangers” as he likes to call us) to certain scenicspots where we could, if we wanted, buy things to eat and drink from people he appears to know quite well. There were quite a few carefully selected refreshment stops on the way to Maga. The only place we definitely wanted to visit, however, was a village called Pouss, where a volunteer named Odettelives and works. It’s always interesting to see how other volunteers live. Odette has taken village life in her stride. It’s a small place and she’s very outgoing, so everyone knows her, and she seems to know everyone by name and knows the latest goings on in their life and that of their family. She keeps 4 ducks and 3 chickens, so she has fresh eggs every morning, but she vows never to eat the birds because she has given them names. She also has a cat called Niwi. (Niwi is Muscum for cat, and Muscum is the local dialect of Pouss.) She doesn’t let people wander in and out of her houseas Sid does, but she does let children into the garden if it’s for something useful like looking after the animals. If you met Odette for the first time, you would think she was a teacher. And if you saw her with the local children, you’d know she was a great teacher. It was nice to see her andinteresting to see the village. It has high mud walls enclosing every concession, with the result that you can only see sand, and sand-coloured walls, most places you go. Our driver Abatcha knows people everywhere, so it wasn’t surprising when, after evening prayer, he disappeared for 2 hours before turning up with one of his pals, looking rather sheepish. Luckily Pouss is practically next door to Maga so we were able to finish the journey before it got too late.While Abatcha was AWOL, we happened to see a wedding procession. Up front is the“bride price” – a goat – and behind, all the wedding gifts carried on the heads of friends and family.We arrived, deeply apologetic, at Tom’s about 2 hours after our expected arrival time. Tom is the Maga volunteer and works with the local government there. He said that in fact things had worked out quite conveniently since he owns only 4 plates. So dinner had to be divided into two sittings anyway. It was a lovely meal cooked on a single ring in a big pot, using the few fresh ingredients that were available that day. Maga doesn’t have the same variety of food that Yagoua or even Kaele has. But the meal was wonderful, and it was nice talking over dinner and learning about the region from Abatcha before going back to our hotel.And what a hotel! This was our room, outside and in.And this is one of the gazelles who live on the groundsThere are also all manner of wild birds there, and some camels. The camels are not native to Maga of course, but the hotel owners imported them as a novelty attraction.This is the bar, and just behind it– yes – the pool!! I’m going back to Maga. Soon...So, then what? Well, a long shower (because the road to Maga is long, hot and dusty) and then to bed (because on the first night the bar was closed).And the next day was the hippo tour. I went expecting to see no hippos. And for the first hour or so I wasn’t disappointed. We were taken around in a motorised pirogue, through marsh grass a bit like the everglades. I incorrectly identified a wide range of things as a hippo, from goats, to floating plastic bags, to a pair of shoes. (“Lizzy? How big do you think hippos are?”) Just when I was givingup hope, we turned a corner and our guide started shouting in Muscum, pointing to a distant object sticking out of the water. Not a plastic bag, and certainly no goat, and apparently a hippo. That moment reminded me of the day at crocodile lake – distant unidentifiable blotches that don’t come out well in photos. Only as we got closer, this blotch didn’t move. We eventually got close enough to see in detail a hippo’s head.It was an amazing sight and, eloquent people that we volunteers are, we managed to encapsulate all our awe and wonder in a few choice sentences:“Wow, isn’t it big?”“Yeah, it really is. It really is big”“I mean, I always knew hippos were big. But this one really is big.”“I know what you mean. You think you know how big they are, but then you see one and you realise that they really are bigger than you thought”“I wonder how big the rest of it is?”“Dunno, but I bet it’s big”And so on. Anyone listening in would be left in no doubt as to the bigness of hippos. And then the hippo yawned. I’ve seen that on telly so many times, and I never stopped for a second to think why they do it. I just assumed they were tired. Turns out it’s a sign you should probably get out of their way. So we left, happy to have seen a real life hippopotamus.But then, about 15 minutes later…You may not realise this just from the photos, but hippos are really very big.We were incredibly lucky to have seen them all together like that. Tom’s been three times now and says this time was by far the best. It was also a good day for birdwatchers. I’m not one of them, but I was nonetheless able to appreciate the variety of the bird life we saw. I was so appreciative in fact, that I didn’t take a single picture of birds. Sorry.So. What better way to celebrate a successful day on a boat than by having a swim and eating in a pricey hotel restaurant? And by pricey I mean 70 whole pence for a half pint, and six whole pounds for a 3-course meal. In the restaurant, we met the first tourists we’ve seen in Cameroon since October. They’re hunters from Lyon, so not conventional tourists, but still here on holiday so they count. They shot the bird we ate for supper. Just brought a load of perdrix (partridge?) to the hotel one day as a present, so were being treated like royalty as a result. The rest of the birds they gave to villagers. I don’t really see the fun in hunting, but there’ll be quite a lot of people around Maga eating well this week because of them, and they came to Cameroon instead of Canada for precisely that reason. I suppose if you’re going to shoot things forfun, you could be a lot less nice about it than the hunters we met in Maga.Next day, we checked out and headed home. Sid was replaced by Karlynne in the car, so we went to Pouss again so she could see Odette’s chickens.But first, Abatcha took us to visit the Sultan of Pouss. He is a traditional rather than administrative leader, and a powerful man. Visit him if you dare. There are rules… Leaving our shoes outside came naturally to us. It makes sense with all the sand. However when you visit the Sultan, you leave your shoes as far away from the door as possible. It means you collect sand in your feet then trample it over his rugs, but it shows respect, and that’s what’s important. Other rules are: never look the chief in the eye; sit wherever you are told to sit, and don’t cross your legs in his presence. We were told to sit on a three-person sofa, in the middle of a line of chairs, against the far wall of the room. We did so, not knowing where to look, so looking only at each other and the floor as we passed about a dozen men sitting on a mat around the Sultan’s wooden throne. Once we were on our sofa, there was a prolonged silence. Was someone waiting for us to say something? Would it be rude if we said something? It would have been helpful to look around and gauge the situation, but what if we accidentally looked the Sultan in the eye? So we sat silently, and after a while he started to ask us questions in turn. Only we weren’t allowed to look at him so didn’t know whose turn it was, and kept interrupting each other and stopping and starting. Haveyou tried to have a conversation with someone without looking at them? Try it, it’s impossible. Anyway, after he was satisfied, frustrated or bored with us, I’m not sure which, he told Abatcha that he would allow us to “film” (take pictures) outside his palace. As far as I know we hadn’tasked to do so, and I’m sure I would have remembered something like that. But permission had now been granted, so, film we did.Then we stood about, wondering whether that was that, or whether we were supposed to go inside again. We stood about a bit longer then went inside again. Grahame sat in a different place on the sofa, which confused me completely since I have no sense for these things, and I nearly sat in a different chair altogether. Which I’m pretty sure would have been the wrong thing to do. But I didn’t sit there, so that’s okay. After a couple of minutes’ silence, the Sultan said to us that, if we had any questions, he would be happy to answer them. Damn. I didn’t have a question. I just smiled and said thank you and hoped that Karlynne or Grahame had a question. Silence. They didn’t have a question either. A very uncomfortable minute or so passed, my mind a complete blank. The Sultan said again that he was entirely ready to answer any questions we had for him, and now would be a good time to ask. The Countdown clock was ticking away. What do you ask a Sultan? Not a personal question surely, brothers, sisters, wives, all too prying. Ask about the nature of his job? “So, what’s it like being a Sultan?” “What do you do all day?” Probably demonstrate a bit too much ignorance and might also be too prying. Erm… Do you like yams? A bit trivial. Have you ever heard of the Beatles? How do you get the sand out of your rug? What’s your favourite type of boule? Nothing seemed right. Grahame and Karlynne were obviously having a similar struggle, and now our driver was getting stressed, understandably. His reputation with the Sultan was potentially on the line here. He said, firmly “It would be good to use this moment to profit from your time here in the presence of the Sultan. Nobody else exists who has the level of knowledge he does about all that you have experienced here today. He is the only man who can tell you with absolute authority anything you want to know.” We all nodded appreciatively, acknowledging the Sultan’s unparalleled expertise on all the things we were just on the brink of asking about. But this was getting very awkward. Karlynne whispered to me “I think we should ask a question”. I didn’t whisper back, and I think that was wise. In the end, I asked the Sultan how old his palace was. Only I asked using “Quel âge”, which you only really use for people and maybe pets. It was a bit like asking how long the palace had been alive, or when it was born.It sounded silly. So Karlynne corrected me and the Sultan gave me an answer. I have no idea what that answer was. I was just extremely relieved at having asked a question, and that was enough for me. No answer necessary, thank you very much. Then after he stopped answering I tried to do an impressedface, and we sat in silence a bit longer. I had an overwhelming desire to giggle out of sheer embarrassment. I didn’t, but my memory of what it’s like to be 12 has been very much refreshed today. Abatcha asked a follow-up question, listened to the answer, did a more genuine impressed face, andthen said that unless we had any more questions ourselves (we didn’t) maybe we should go. And we went. We emerged relieved and unharmed into the light of day. When visiting a Sultan, always prepare a list of questions in advance. It’s obvious when you think about it.We visited Odette again and I played with Niwi the cat, then we went to look at the closest thing I’ve seen to a museum.This is it.Those domed buildings are traditional houses and the whole enclosure is a traditional concession. What I’ve been calling traditional houses or huts up to now are in fact just called houses here, while these domes are the genuine traditional houses. No-one lives in these any more. They built these ones just to educate tourists. And blog readers. Prepare to be educated.The houses are built over 6 months out of a mixture of grass, sand and cow dung, and they are built in stages, each stage taking 4 days– half a day to build and the rest of the time to dry out.There is an enormous clay pot in the middle of the concession, for storing grain. In the first wife’s house is a smaller grain pot (grénier), a fire for cooking, a bit of floor sectioned off for animals to sleep, and another bit for the wife to sleep in. The second wife doesn’t have it so good. Just a room and a pot for her. There was no space in the museum for a third wife, fourth wife, etc. But their houses would be the same as the second wife’s. The children would sleep in the same hut as their mother, normally, but probably if there was a close bond between the wives it wouldn’t matter which child slept where. The father’s hut had an area for all the big animals to sleep in and an area for him to sleep next to them. People slept either on grass mats on the floor, or on traditional beds made of some sort of cane. Annexed onto the father’s house was a chamber where the whole family would hide if there was an attack. The father would cover the doorway with a specially made shield woven so thickly and tightly out of grass that not even an arrow could break it. The house entrances all had antelope horns, sticking out above the arch, onto which the doors were hung – the doors being a bit like curtains made of thin sticks tied together.In spite of the baking hot sun, the houses were all very cool inside, probably down to their height and lack of windows. An ancient and highly effective air conditioning system. Being in a traditional house was like being in a cave. There were even bats hanging from the roof and swooping down if we made too much noise.The doorways, incidentally, are shaped like this:The houses are designed to be climbed,like this:Uncovered, the roof looks like this:and it leaves a circle of light on the wall so you can pretend to be in a religious painting, like this:If you ignore the tea stain on my t-shirt, I think you’ll find I make a rather convincing saint.So, that’s that. I have been working, honest, it’s just that it’s more fun to write about the other stuff. It’s been a great few weeks, and my run of bad luck on the animal front seems to have come to an end. Which is why after posting this blog I’m going off to Kaele to stay with Sid and try again on the crocs. Maybe we’ll even venture into the hills and look for a monkey.Wish me luck…