Back to Amarula

Impressions along the road and within...
Sunflowers among the cassava, sunflowers dried out brown, corn; dead standing, millet, sorghum. Baobabs worn and scarred. Bee hives, both modern and the traditional hollowed out logs hanging from the trees. Cattle and goats on the move, some friendly herders, soot blackened landscapes, scorched trees, deep sand in dry river beds, children waving, others; impassive. Gigantic boulders worn smooth clustered on hilltops, trees as far as the eye can see: acacia, miombo, baobab, other acacia, going brown and others blooming as the dry season  begins.
 Returning to a loved place has been enlightening. Overcoming or at least attempting to understand the cultural differences due to language and religion has stretched my comfort zone, tolerance and occasionally patience. Context as I experience it, in  layers of cognition and insight continue to teach me how little I know. And how educated, sophisticated, motivated and inspired by my consciousness and the myriad abundance I am. Juxtaposed to individuals, children and adults, who can spend the day managing a mixed flock of goats, sheep and cows wandering through a landscape with not much forage. They find what they can. My capacity to understand concepts, consequences and a sense of a bigger picture is limited by my exposure, use and access to information. How much of what I or anyone knows or can use is actually useful in any given circumstance, is dependant on situation, environment, ecosystem ….
Technology is seductive, I am so enrolled. I use a phone and camera to take pictures; a laptop to articulate my thoughts, a reading device to do research and entertain myself on long flights and the internet , when I can find it, to share this with you.
My ability to justify my actions in moral and ethical terms is so caught up in complication it goes way beyond complex. And I’ve maintained and believed I was living a simple life all these years.
Meanwhile, back to what’s actually happening here.  I am overlooking a vast plain to the east dotted with relatively short trees, again as far as the eye can see, eventually reaching the Indian Ocean. The two fellows employed by my host have recently returned burdened by loads of firewood ‘kuni’ they hacked out of, hopefully, dead trees, with a machete, out of earshot, down the slope towards the dry river. Wood being the primary source of fuel for cooking, we will be sauna-ing Finnish style again and then sitting (if the wind dies down enough) around a  campfire. Something I would imagine no one around here would consider a useful pastime unless dinner was being cooked.
The landscape here is so compelling, Walking through the surroundings brushing dry basil stalks, crackling leaves,  drinking in the vistas, the familiar and the novelty. The temperature is certainly amenable, although sitting in a moving car with the windows shut against the tsetse flies can sure build up a sweat. Thankfully they restrict their habitat to few places. I'm glad to be here, again.

Still walking

Walking is our default option for mobility. This weekend we watched Artur Mikes, a 15 month old inquisitive, smiling little bundle of energy make his way around the circling porch of his home. Trucking along with and without my finger grasped firmly in his hand. He would falter, trip and pick himself up consitently without complaint.

 Into the garden, down pathways, back and forth, in and out of the kitchen. Occasionally he reverted to a crawl working his way to his dad or mom then standing, motioning with his hands and spouting incomprehensible syllables.

I felt like I was at the other end of that cycle.
After walking in to their home, a farm tucked in between forest and pasture in the mountains of  North West Cameroon I was beat and almost mute.


Halfway there, Louis, our friend from Bafut offered to take my backpack. No hesitation, I handed it over.
 We’d been climbing up a rutted slope after picking our way across two log bridges traversing the stream at the bottom of a ravine.
The cattle and the rain had made the ground like inconstant corduroy, deeply eroded channels all aimed downhill. Or uphill which is where we were going. These “trails” are erratic, narrow and occasionally slippery. I was using my cane and it often slipped, throwing my already compromised balance off. The grassy pasture, a bright green from recent rains was tufted and steep making for tough going even without the pack. However, the view was spectacular. These are the mountains in the North East we can see from our apartment in Bamenda and it was clear enough to see all the way back there.
 All around was lush growth, blooming trees, shrubs and bulbs.With hardly a cloud, the sun beat down. The shade was  welcome as we circled the mountain, following the cow paths and “road” where we met a herd of cows accompanied by both younger and elder herders.

That part of the trail is completely pedestrian, the steep slopes and erosion make it impassable even for motorbikes. Crossing another watercourse stepping from rock to rock we climbed again. through deeply eroded banks up onto a grass verge. It was startlingly green, bright and fresh like some vast pasture anywhere in the world. Off to the right were small earth brick houses, laundry hung brightly on the fence.

Here we were joined by 3 young boys who accompanied us and themselves by singing loudly as we walked into the forest along a better maintained road.The large trees and thick bush provided  cooling shade and we soon arrived at Martin and Jella Mikes’ homestead.

After a short rest and refreshment we toured the property. Martin is passionate about protecting the forest and has planted over 15,000 trees up the mountain on the property he stewards. His tree nursery has thousands more germinating and filling poly pots.

 He’s also passionate about permaculture  and organic gardening, growing wheat, irish (potatoes), cabbage, onions and carrots. What they can’t grow they trade with neighbours making them almost community sufficient.
Nearby there is a group of chimpanzees living in what remains of the primal forest. Part of why Martin and Jella are here is to advocate and protect the habitat for these remaining animals. The local herders are more interested in burning the vegetation away to make more pasture… Cattle are their life blood. Their economies are based on having large herds and somewhere to graze them.
The local forestry officials seem less than committed to protection and there have been constant struggles with officialdom navigating the bureaucracies. But after 8 years the Mikes’ interest seems hardly diminished and much has been accomplished. Chickens, goats and 3 types of fish in their pond, compost piles producing mulch and dark soil growing healthy vegetables. A well established herb garden and a number of round earth block buildings , water systems and a school for the local children. Unfortunately at this time the school has been closed.
Oh to be young again, with this knowledge and experience….
We had brought some bratwurst from the Helping Hands Butcher shop and with a substantial salad of homegrown veggies had a satisfying supper.

The light faded, the clouds rolled in (literally!) and were in the fog and deep damp.







In the morning after breakfast and some conversation, Elke and Louis built a rocket stove cooker in the  kitchen. Martin had blocks already made and it was together in very little time. I did my best to record the process, It is entertaining how everyone gets in the way of the camera, especially those actually building!

Their previous cooking arrangement involved 3 stones and very large pieces of constantly smouldering wood, so this was a revelation. But also a major adjustment from big stuff to small, twigs and branches. I sensed some resistance from the cook, it will take some time and experience to win her over. The design needed adjustments as well, we are all still learning but it is an improvement in air quality and safety.






Our stay was short, we’d arranged for our taxi to pick us up at 3 so after lunch cooked on both 3 stones and the new cooker, we walked out, accompanied by Jella with Artur on her back. At the rutted field we said goodbye and made our descent into the narrow valley recrossing the stream, clambering up the other side, then back along the road, past horses in the fields and walkers hauling sacks of groceries to their homes. Onto a better road where fellows were falling great eucalyptus trees, slicing them up into timber and boards. Up the steep hillside some women called out us as they stopped their harvesting and hoeing in the terraced farm. Motorcycles passed us carrying massive sacks of NjamaNjama; what they call Huckleberry-  Black Nightshade leaves-Solanum nigra- for sale in town.
Eventually we arrived at the paved road leading  east to Ndop or  back to Bamenda. I had managed the backpack every step of the way. Tired but satisfied. I’m not over the hill yet.
  After purchasing a few items from the vendors congregating along the road we found ourselves a seat in a Mimbo bar and grill and sheltered from the rain. Good timing! Eric our driver came along and we were on our way home. (More pictures on my Facebook page!)

Bamenda journal

After some soul searching and reality checks we’ve decided to continue living in town. The apartment building is familiar (our third time living here) and central. Step out the front entrance (there is no rear entrance unless I get us a rope ladder)
and it’s easy to catch a taxi going by in either direction. We usually walk though, right, to the Better World office towards Bafut or down Fish Pond Hill to the food market below. To the left goes down past the hospital to get to Commercial avenue or  to French lessons at Veterinary junction.

 This Saturday morning we made our way down the hill for weekend shopping and entertainment. It’s  an engaging descent as taxis and motorcycles laden with all manner of goods hurtle uphill and down often spewing noxious fumes. Both sides of the road there are tradesmen and  small industry making aluminum cooking pots, cement bricks and furniture . At the bottom the road crosses a stream choked with detritus and garbage, plastic, tires and discarded baskets from the market. Upstream, I saw a fellow washing himself.
 It's a busy time, the food market  packed with vendors and buyers, the motorcycle drivers congregating at the corner like vultures, waiting for fares. Crossing the road can be challenging although there is so much traffic and the road is so narrow it is often at a standstill.  The roadsides lined with vendors hawking wheelbarrows full of peppers, groundnuts, onions and oranges, the stalls behind with almost everything else.

We continued on past trays and carts of kola nut, potatoes and stacks of eggs to the fish market (all frozen). Then parallel to the main road up an alley past piles of new flip flops and many little kiosks  with used shoes hanging from strings.
Beyond this is the “clothing district” small booths and stalls shoulder to shoulder along a narrow winding track, densely packed with people, motorcycles honking as they make their way ferrying folks and goods up and down. The whole while in an endless cacophony all these vendors are yelling, calling out, some with repeating recorded messages,”one thousand for pants, one thousand for shirts”.  Piles of used jeans, towels and sheets, hats, new and used underwear. We round a corner past stacks of aluminum pots from big to much bigger, stone grinders, plastic utensils, curtains and used purses. The road was almost impassable, trucks offloading and motorcycles squeezing past the pedestrians and cart boys flogging drinks and snacks.
One had a sign: Special Sale, his cart filled with wines and hard stuff. Apparently no liquor licence required.
 Inside the main market it is laid out in a grid,  a mini medina with darkened passageways running East West and open alleys North South.  From cutlery to contraband I imagine it’s all available. We entered the main entrance off Commercial avenue specifically to see the fabric. Immediately to the right a wide passage of hole in the wall rooms, both sides, with layers of brightly coloured printed fabrics hung out in front. Inside the walls are lined with them, floor to ceiling, piles in the corners. It is almost too much.... I’d like one of each please.
Seriously, it becomes so overstimulating I have stop and focus on what I might use it for…

 In the other direction past the entrance there are three alleys of mostly women producing clothing, sitting at their sewing machines surrounded by the already created shirts, suits and dresses inside and out of their individual workstations. Taking pictures can be challenging. The locals do it all the time but as soon as I point, they want money or they object.
This day though, we were done, and walked out without looking at the clothing. Outside the vendors along Commercial line both sides of the sidewalk in front of the market. We picked our way through then  down the road to a small juice bar where we had a salad, a guava juice and reflected on our next moves.

December 13  2013
I'm sitting here in Bamenda on a cool a grey morning looking out over the town below. The market as usual is busy with taxi's and motorcycles dropping off and picking up people loaded down with packages of things to sell or what they've purchased. From up here it's like watching an anthill peppered with tiny umbrellas, an occasional bus slowly working its way along the edge. Directly below us are houses, compounds mostly made of mud brick covered over with corrugated tin roofs. You can imagine what it sounds like when it rains. These buildings descend like steps, intermingled with bananas, papaya and mango trees down to the market. The sounds of people talking, yelling, banging away on metal, an occasional dog barking, children crying, laughing and playing mingled with loudly broadcast music and the ubiquitous honking goes on into the night daily.
Beyond the market the terrain rises slightly covered with concrete block buildings,  some apartments, but mostly business's. We walk that way frequently going downtown. One whole section is dedicated to car repair, parts and "service" the rusting hulks of cannibalized taxi's, vans and small trucks willy nilly lining the "roads". When it's been raining it is barely navigable on foot, rutted and potholed it turns into a quagmire with all the metal, broken glass and spilled oil unevenly distributed for blocks. The paved street two roads over to the right is like a racetrack, the taxis and motorcycles weaving up and down as the pedestrians squeeze between the parked cars and the live traffic, a constant stream of humanity walking back and forth with goods for sale on their heads, or delivering used car parts, business men in suits and women with babies.
 Not many tourists here, it's almost worth remarking when we see one. Ironically they seldom acknowledge me, some kind of denial that there could be anyone else having this unique experience, I know I've felt it myself, and read about others experiencing and describing it... Read any Pico Iyer? He nails a lot of the traveler's angst and dismay.
Beyond that commercial area up to the left a ridge with more apartment buildings rising up it's slopes and some open land at the top, likely a religious school or church grounds. Almost every educational facility here has Presbyterian or Catholic affiliations. And they seem to own most of the green space, beyond the individual garden plot everyone has to grow their sweet potato, corn or assorted yam varieties.


Behind all that there is more, and more of the same to the north and west but it's framed by cliffs that line the south east edge, houses and compounds climbing to the vertical limits.  We climbed up those slopes a few weeks ago to view one of the waterfalls.

I find it incredible how people can manage to capitalize on the slightest amount of barely level ground and punch in a garden. Although the gardens themselves are not visible from here, I recently saw fires and smoke so assume they are doing slash and burn as we approach the dry season.
Up top in Upstation, the government officials, high rollers and gentry of the place have massive properties with even more massive "houses" among the very old mansions built during and since the Germans were here 100 years ago. Apparently the view up there is spectacular. It was hard to see through all the hedges, walls and fences erected around their properties.
The view from here is pretty amazing, the mountains beyond blocking the sun's rise until 6:45, later lit up as it sets. It's a constantly changing panorama when the smog/mist clears.

I've been reading an old travel guide; this place has tripled in size in ten years; you can well imagine the infrastructure  challenges. The folks next door down below have an outside shower and biffy and put out buckets to collect their water or walk a few blocks to a seemingly public "tap" which I first thought was a leaking waterline. It may be, but recently some enterprising individual poured concrete around the outlet and installed a pipe. Everyday there are kids surrounding it waiting with their used plastic "jerry cans" to fill up and haul off.
The dry time is coming, when the Harmattan blows sand and dust off the Sahara, blocking the sun for days at a time and dropping the temperature.
Not enough for a white Christmas though.

We walk to Haubi

At Amarula campsite in Tanzania every once in a while someone would mention Haubi, a small town nestled in the mountains to the east and south of us. It had a lake! Amazing to consider in this dry environment. And a Sunday market!
Hamisi, one of our workers said he'd ridden his bike there to visit his father from the Pahi side, so I thought it couldn't be too far. One of our goals at the camp was to investigate possible day hikes around the vicinity for our visitors.  Our time at Amarula was rapidly coming to an end so we arranged with Hamisi and Daniel to guide us there one Sunday in September.
  Our host Seppo was visiting and drove us early to the turn, off the Kondoa road. As he drove away the numerous folks waiting for the bus to Haubi peppered Hamisi with questions. "Who are those white folks and why are you walking when you can take the bus?"

The road was rough; loose rock, steep and dusty from months without rain.  Soon we took a"shortcut" following a well worn path traversing a wild and undulating landscape. Off to the right and behind us a village  perched on a rise in the distance. Ahead brush, the odd tree and far away to the south as we climbed we could make out buildings in Kondoa.


When it rains here it is torrential. We descended a few times into canyons of eroded clay and stone, crossing narrow channels carved deep into the earth between hoodoo like columns of dried mud.

Then up and out through scrubby bush and herbage. Incredibly in the midst of this we passed a woman, just sitting, waiting. For what I know not, seemingly, in the middle of nowhere.

  Back on the road dump trucks filled with people passed us by on their way to the market. They all seemed pleased to see us, waving and calling out as the truck lumbered past swaying and straining up the hills. Not long after we walked across a wide sandy river, the tire tracks churned deeply into ruts. I wondered how they managed when the river was running.
Occasionally we'd pass or be passed by young women draped in layers of colourful cloth, Kangas and Kitenges flowing behind them, mist like, baskets in their hands.
Climbing still we passed through a small village, Hamisi again explaining  our purpose to the assembled men at the roadside.

 Not long after a few of those men caught up and walked with us awhile through more extreme looking landscapes till suddenly before us the lake appeared. Some settlement all around, the town visible at the far end at the foot of the hills.


 Walking on we found a fig tree loaded with fruit. Although apparently not so attractive to the locals, we nevertheless enjoyed a sweet treat and a break in the shade before continuing on.

 Down below to the left the lake was choked with weed and reeds so no swimming to cool our sweaty bodies. By this time the road had become quite crowded with people returning from the market. As we turned a corner near lakes end, there before us, a sea of people, booths and buses, trucks, donkeys, dogs, goats and chickens, coloured cloths, racks of western style clothing, pots and pans. I walked past a fellow sitting behind all manner of hardware, hinges, doorlocks, bolts and screws, car and bicycle parts spread out on the ground. And almost everyone there staring at us.
 The whole way we'd been anticipating some food and a place to sit to enjoy it. Where we finally ended up was more like a cave than a cafe and no chips mayai.
That brief interlude passed and we continued on around the lake walking back towards Pahi, passing a woman carrying an enormous clay pot on her head.
 Turns out Haubi is a source of homebrew, made in these giant pots. I wanted one! Sanity prevailed and we walked on.... and on... and on.
 The road continues into the hills but at the river Hamisi turned us right.

 Erosion has an amazing face, the steep walls of sandy clay cut by years of roaring river,  the bed wide and hard enough to drive on. We  walked down broad avenues, around corners into grottoes and canyons, past cliffs and islands eventually climbing onto a plateau up what looked like a driveway.
 On one side farmland stretched right up against the rising hills. On the left, steep drops into narrow canyons choked with vegetation.  Proceeding through this valley the path became narrower, the drops on either side more precipitous and I realized no one was driving in or out from this side!
Ahead the vast Masai steppe was visible from our vantage point in the hills. The trail, no longer a path, traversed one hillside to the other, up down and around loose rock and boulders through Miombo forest.

  It was remarkably red and green, the trees beginning to leaf out in anticipation of the coming rains.

 Stopping to rest we were passed by parties of young men and women, then family groups from very old to young with a troop of donkeys, not impressed, veering off the trail to avoid us.

 

 Down, down through scrub and forest, sliding over rock faces, around more boulders then coming around a corner on the road,  way off in the distance, we spied Amarula camp. Elke called Seppo for a ride and as the land leveled off we walked into  Pahi.
Quite a spectacular walk, we decided next time we'd do it in two days. Maybe then we could try the homebrew?