RAINY AND DRY SEASONS IN CAMEROON

Cameroon has two seasons which are the rainy and dry seasons. The rainy season begins in April and ends in November. Most streets, especially in the rural areas, are dirt roads, so they become very muddy during the rainy season, as you can see from the attached photos. Travel is very difficult, to a point where a simple trip can take three times as long, due to the condition of the roads. It is quite common for cars to get stuck on transit to remote villages, and are unable to move for several days. People sometimes have to spend one or two nights by their car on the road. It even happens that access in or out of town can be blocked because a car or large transport vehicle got stuck in the mud in the middle of the road. Depending in what part of Cameroon you are, the rains may come to an end mid October. The rainy season in the northern part of Cameroon has a rainy season that starts in May and ends in September.  Average rainy fall per year is between 1,500mm- 2,000 depending in what part of Cameroon you are. Most areas around the south coast get higher rain fall than areas in the northeast. Kribi, one of the cities around the coast, gets about 2,970 of rain each year.  

LIFE AS A KID IN SOME PARTS OF CAMEROON.

Cameroon is one of those places where one may wonder, as kids grow up, what is their lifestyle like?How do they spend their time after school with friends and family. Well, I will tell you a bit about it,based on my experiences as a child there. For a child not big enough to walk, it is very normal for your mother to do all the house work and take you where ever she goes. Most commonly, mothers will carry their child in a ‘sling’, which is really a large piece of cloth that she’ll wrap around her, with the child on her back, tucked away inside. When she starts crimping, she is able to leave you with your elder brother or sister who is about five or six and go to fetch water or buy food from the market. Sometimes, she might ask the neighbour to keep an eye on you when she is gone.

People are not afraid to let their kids explore and go to places without them. When the child starts school, the mother makes sure there is cooked food to take to school and eat during lunch time. The first year, the mother can walk the kid to school but as from the second year, most kids walk to school with other friends from their neighbourhood.

After school, kids spend some time playing with their friends before coming home. It is normal for a five year old, once they get home from school to fetch water or firewood with his elder brother or sister who might be just seven or eight, so that their mother will need that to prepare dinner. Some children have to bathe in a nearby stream after school, as well as wash their school attire and fetch water before going home.

FUNERALS IN CAMEROON.

As a kid living in the village, I could count the number of times I heard that someone had passed away and it was always an elderly man or woman. I remember going to a funeral for the first time and seeing the corpse dressed in African wear, lying on a mat on a bamboo bed. The service was for an elderly man who was known as Pa Fondze. I remember stealing my way in because kids were not allowed to see corpse for the reason that they will see dead people at night in their dreams. If a man died in the morning, that person was buried that same day before sun set, and to this day, no burial takes place close to noon. I have never known the reason why, but it is a practice that all tribes in Cameroon follow and respect.

When I was 7 years old, my auntie’s husband, with whom I was living in Bamenda, was transferred to Douala to work as a Police officer. That is where my knowledge of death ceremonies was strongly affected. In Douala funerals are more of a rendez-vous area for meeting friends, drinking, dancing and being introduced to new people. The deceased is kept in the mortuary which is like a deep refrigerator for days depending on how much money the family intends to spend on the burial. In cases where some family members live abroad and have to come home, it can even take up to a month before the service and burial. A day at the mortuary is about $10, but only the rich can afford to keep people for longer than two weeks. In some traditions, when a youth dies when his parents are still alive, the burial is done as soon as possible, because it is considered ill luck to lose a child.

TRADITIONAL MARRIAGES IN THE NSO LAND

Bui is one of the divisions under the N.W. Province in Cameroon.  It has six sub divisions and its population in 2008 was estimated at 420,000 people, and the capital of Bui Division is called Kumbo. The Nso people are regarded as the grassland people and their traditional language is called Lamnso (Language of Nso). The Fon of Nso is the traditional ruler, both respected by his people and the government. The Fon’s palace is called “Ntoh Nso”, known as the centre for social and cultural festivities. The Nso society is divided in lineage group often referred to as the “Big Compound” and they are ruled by traditional heads known as “Fais” instituted by the Fon of Nso. Like all traditional heads, they do not shake hands with humans as traditional demands.

Traditional marriage rites take place in most Big Compounds and as tradition demands, the groom to be must visit the family of the bride. The parents of the bride have little say about what will be given as a bride’s price. The price for the first girl of a family is paid at the mother’s family Big Compound as tradition requires, and the other girls are paid for at the father’s Big Compound. Tradition of the family compound demands that is what was paid for your mother will be the same that will be paid for you, the bride to be, and it can be in the form of cash or kind, but mostly the groom’s family is provided with a list of things to bring as a bride- price. 

POVERTY IN THE VILLAGE

My mother lives in a rural area that has no electricity or running water and is only accessible by “bush taxi” over very rough roads that can become impassable in the rainy season. That is how the poverty level seems like. Some people have gas-fired cook-tops, although many others, including my mother, have to cook their meals over wood burning fires. Almost everyone in the area has dealt with typhoid and malaria at least a few times in their lives.

Believe it or not, Cameroon is not even one of the 50 poorest countries in the world. People are not starving in the region where I come from. In fact, food is abundant in this part of the country, and beggars are more common in downtown Toronto than in Bamenda. Shelter, education and health services are available (with varying levels of quality), and with the exception of remote areas, such as my mother’s village, there is reasonable access to clean water. 

POVERTY IN CAMEROON

My home country of Cameroon, like many Sub-Saharan African countries, struggles with high levels of poverty. From an international perspective, the average gross domestic product per capita is estimated at approximately $2,300, compared with $41,100 in Canada. Unemployment in Cameroon is estimated at 30%, and 48% of the population lives below the poverty line.[i]
These statistics suggest that people struggle to survive in Cameroon, but I do not think statistics really tell a story the way it should be told. I would like to tell you a bit about life in the city where I lived before coming to Canada, as well as the village where my mother currently lives. To help with your perspective, try to imagine your own hometown looking like what I’m describing below, keeping in mind that Bamenda is a city of three hundred thousand people.

CAMEROON “MON CAMAIR”

The Republic of Cameroon is a bilingual country (with two official languages - English and French) found in the west- central Africa. Cameroon as it is popularly called, shares borders with six different countries including The Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Chad and Central African Republic. Cameroon is called “Africa in miniature” because of it richness in minerals, cultural diversity and geological coastline that lies in the bight of bonny, the gulf of Guinea Congo and the Atlantic Oceans.