Saturday, December 31, 2005
Dec. 21st, 2005
An Audience with a King in it.
Perhaps two months ago, somewhere in the vicinity of the Togolese mountains, I made a lousy prediction. I forecast ceaseless rain for our journey for all territories between Togo and Angola with the sole exception of Niger. It has not rained since that day. It did not rain in Benin, Nigeria or Cameroon. At most we have felt a drizzle, nothing sufficiently powerful to clean a car, nothing longer than an elevator ride. Cameroon has several rainy seasons during which rainfall is measured in meters instead of inches; we are fortunate to have squeezed between them all. Hopefully we will find central Africa during a dry spell; but the rain charts on our Michelin map indicate otherwise. Some of the potholes we drove through in Cameroon literally swallowed the car; I would hate to see them full of water; I would hate to be the one who has to walk through them in advance of our low lying sports car.
We arrived in Foumban on a Friday night and made friends. Somehow the next morning we were being roused by a supremely energetic comic actor who intended us to play a prominent role in some sketches about HIV and sexual health. It was the time of Saturday morning that can only be enjoyed by cartoon fiending six year olds or people who have stayed awake all night. We were rehearsing in front of a crowd of young children under the direction of a perfectionist for whom I had to exhaust considerable reserves of patience. His judgments were sound and the skit was amusing; it is detailed under the Cameroonian section of the HIV/AIDS page. When we arrived at the central square, the sound system was inevitably faulty, so we had to resort to pantomime, which suited Sean's non-speaking part far better than mine. But we managed and then for some reason our director began to lead his entire youth organization-along with the three of us-in an endless and unplanned dance and clapping number that I escaped by pretending to take photographs with our camera that had no batteries. The thousand or so people that were on hand for our shenanigans included chiefs, and impressively dressed fancy men to whom much deference was given. The king of the Bafoum showed up after our performance when the crowd was beginning to grow unruly in expectation of the arrival of its football team, which had just moved up a division. They were the real cause of the event, which was quickly ruined by the lugubrious and interminable speeches of self-important men.
I left early and missed the entire football team's initiation into warrior hood, which involved being individually lifted and shaken by a mighty general and receiving functional metal spears from a triad of elders. It was rumored that the king was upset to have missed our performance, since it is novel to find white people ridiculing in public the sexually predatory behavior of their own kind. It was rumored that we were going to have to perform our skit for a second time. Fortunately, this did not come to pass. This celebration of football triumph was the most traditional and authentic display of African culture I have so far seen in my life. There was not a tourist or a guide in site and the king's body guards had wicked swords and the best hats ever.
I forgot to mention two months ago on the roads around Agadez, Niger that the men who walked along the roadside in the open country carried long sheathed swords and dressed like exiled zen ninjas.
From Foumban we descended the massive kilometer high plateau of Central Cameroon into the radically different climate of the south. We left the congestion of dust for chart topping humidity, and muddy sweat. Rubber plantations, banana plantations, pineapple fields and lines of oil palms thousands deep have taken the place of grain fields and gourd fruit. Suddenly the land is valuable enough to be owned in huge swathes by foreign companies like Delmonte.
We arrived in Duoala, the largest and most dangerous city in Cameroon, on the outskirts of which we were warmly and helpfully met by Happy Francois.
An Audience with a King in it.
Perhaps two months ago, somewhere in the vicinity of the Togolese mountains, I made a lousy prediction. I forecast ceaseless rain for our journey for all territories between Togo and Angola with the sole exception of Niger. It has not rained since that day. It did not rain in Benin, Nigeria or Cameroon. At most we have felt a drizzle, nothing sufficiently powerful to clean a car, nothing longer than an elevator ride. Cameroon has several rainy seasons during which rainfall is measured in meters instead of inches; we are fortunate to have squeezed between them all. Hopefully we will find central Africa during a dry spell; but the rain charts on our Michelin map indicate otherwise. Some of the potholes we drove through in Cameroon literally swallowed the car; I would hate to see them full of water; I would hate to be the one who has to walk through them in advance of our low lying sports car.
We arrived in Foumban on a Friday night and made friends. Somehow the next morning we were being roused by a supremely energetic comic actor who intended us to play a prominent role in some sketches about HIV and sexual health. It was the time of Saturday morning that can only be enjoyed by cartoon fiending six year olds or people who have stayed awake all night. We were rehearsing in front of a crowd of young children under the direction of a perfectionist for whom I had to exhaust considerable reserves of patience. His judgments were sound and the skit was amusing; it is detailed under the Cameroonian section of the HIV/AIDS page. When we arrived at the central square, the sound system was inevitably faulty, so we had to resort to pantomime, which suited Sean's non-speaking part far better than mine. But we managed and then for some reason our director began to lead his entire youth organization-along with the three of us-in an endless and unplanned dance and clapping number that I escaped by pretending to take photographs with our camera that had no batteries. The thousand or so people that were on hand for our shenanigans included chiefs, and impressively dressed fancy men to whom much deference was given. The king of the Bafoum showed up after our performance when the crowd was beginning to grow unruly in expectation of the arrival of its football team, which had just moved up a division. They were the real cause of the event, which was quickly ruined by the lugubrious and interminable speeches of self-important men.
I left early and missed the entire football team's initiation into warrior hood, which involved being individually lifted and shaken by a mighty general and receiving functional metal spears from a triad of elders. It was rumored that the king was upset to have missed our performance, since it is novel to find white people ridiculing in public the sexually predatory behavior of their own kind. It was rumored that we were going to have to perform our skit for a second time. Fortunately, this did not come to pass. This celebration of football triumph was the most traditional and authentic display of African culture I have so far seen in my life. There was not a tourist or a guide in site and the king's body guards had wicked swords and the best hats ever.
I forgot to mention two months ago on the roads around Agadez, Niger that the men who walked along the roadside in the open country carried long sheathed swords and dressed like exiled zen ninjas.
From Foumban we descended the massive kilometer high plateau of Central Cameroon into the radically different climate of the south. We left the congestion of dust for chart topping humidity, and muddy sweat. Rubber plantations, banana plantations, pineapple fields and lines of oil palms thousands deep have taken the place of grain fields and gourd fruit. Suddenly the land is valuable enough to be owned in huge swathes by foreign companies like Delmonte.
We arrived in Duoala, the largest and most dangerous city in Cameroon, on the outskirts of which we were warmly and helpfully met by Happy Francois.
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