A little bit about religion
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 05/Jan/2010 10:35, 34 days ago
In the Royal Palace at Foumban, in the West of Cameroon where I spent part of the Christmas holidays, my guide was explaining to me that in the early part of the twentieth century there were wars in the area between the Islamic tribes from the North and the Christian tribes from the South. The Bamoun tribe who live in Foumban weren't convinced by Islam, as it forbade its members to drink alcohol or smoke, and they weren't happy with Christianity either as it said that men should have only one wife. Therefore they resolved their dilemma by inventing their own form of Islam, where drinking, smoking and polygamy were all permitted.Cameroonians generally seem quite happy about mixing and matching their religions. I climbed Mount Cameroon during the holidays, which is in a very Christian Southern region, but as soon as we left the tree line at 2000m our guides and porters found us all palm leaves to wave and led us in a ritual dance to Efasa Moto, the God of the mountain (mountains apparently always have male Gods), to ask him to bless our trip up. There used to be a yearly sacrifice of an albino to Efasa Moto, but this has now been replaced with a white goat and several bottles of whisky.People here are very worried about my (lack of) religion, which they inquire about frequently, especially as I don't pray, go to the mosque, or go to a church. Saying I'm not religious provokes horrified cries of distress about my poor chances in the afterlife, so I normally explain it's very complicated in my family because my mother is from a Jewish family and my father is from a Christian family and leave it at that. This normally works quite well, but once I said this to a work colleague when we were going to visit a village on his motorbike.He turned right round, taking his hands of the handlebars and his eyes off the road and exclaimed delightly, "Ahh! You are Jewish! You are an Isrealite! That is excellent. Do you wish to destroy the Arabs?" (The rivarly between the Cameroonians in Maga and the Chadians just over the border can sometimes manifest itself in anti-Arabic sentiment, as there are a lot of Arabs in Chad). I hastily tried to backtrack and explain that this wasn't my goal, but it didn't stop him explaining I was an Israelite to everyone we met on the road. He then proposed marriage, explaining he'd always wanted an Israelite wife. He was very annoyed when it turned out I knew he was already married (he sacrificed 64 sheep at his wedding last summer!) and wanted to know who'd given away this secret.Sometimes not being religious can be advantageous- several of my friends went to mass at Christmas, and when they tried to sneak off to have lunch after three hours they discovered they'd been locked into the Church. The priest had forbidden any of the congregation of several thousand to be let out until after communion, because he didn't want to be left alone!