In the forest

When Tim's parents came to visit we went on a trip to the Forest in the East of Cameroon. Somewhere not  often visited by tourists. The trip was organised by Projet Grand Singe (Great Apes Project), run by a friend of ours. The idea is to persuade people that the forest and the animals can bring income in other ways, rather than their traditional (now illegal) trade in bush meat. Not that we were expecting to see any sizable animals - in particular lowland gorillas aren't like the highland gorillas we visited in Rwanda, it's hard to get close.

 

 The first three hours of driving was on a beautiful, new road (once we got out of Yaounde anyway). Then over the next three hours the road got increasingly bumpier, narrower and the bridges got more and  more precarious.

Sue's stated reason for getting out of the car before we went over this one was to take a photo, but out of the car seemed like a good place to be at that point!

One of the bridges on the route was in the middle of being mended. They had to put enough planks down for the car to cross.

At the end of the road along which the car could travel we parked, had lunch and set out on foot on a path through the forest. It was a beautiful, shady walk through tall trees. I was expecting the path to be harder going, but of course it was well trodden and it was easy.
 

 

At one point we needed to cross a river, and waited until a small boy came skilfully steering a dugout canoe. On our first attempt the waterline was about a centimetre below the side of the boat and I was worried for the camera! A maximum of two adult passengers at a time turned out to be best! 

There was something idyllic about staying in the village so far from the road, although not so idyllic for teachers, who can't be persuaded to teach there. Those who go to School have to walk that path that we'd come along, although most of the kids can't swim so the stream is a problem. It turned out also even that School has been closed for a while and they don't know when it will reopen.

We all really enjoyed the 'local showers' - at the end of a day's walking it is lovely to have a bucket of hot water and a sheltered outdoor area in which to wash. I can't exactly say we enjoyed the local toilets, but we've been in far worse. On our first evening in the village there was some kind of celebration at the house next to the one by which we were camping. It was fun to hear the music and see the dancing.

The following day, Richard, Tim and Barton set off for their long walk through the forest. Everyone was a little nervous as we didn't know how hard the walking would be. It certainly wasn't the easy path of the first part, but they really enjoyed it. The fact that they needed waterproof boots, not just walking boots got lost in translation, but luckily there were some that belonged to the project.

They had porters carrying their rucksacks and felt a little silly when they saw this woman breastfeeding as she zoomed past them with one of the bags.
 

 They saw some wildlife - a baby turtle, some monkeys, a warthog. They saw chimpanzee nests and the tracks of forest elephants.

Plus they saw the swarms of bees which occupy the research centre during daylight hours.  

On the middle day they had enough energy to take a longish walk to the Dja river.

 
Sue the children and I decided that we'd like to get a taste of how it would be deeper into the forest as well as in the village.

It was interesting to see the different zones - those where there had once been cultivation and the forest was reclaiming the land, those where a tree had fallen and there was dense undergrowth because of the penetration of the sunlight, and those where the canopy was intact and untouched and there was much less undergrowth. In all the zones there were long trailing vines (one of the Tarzan films was made in forests in Cameroon).

 

Once or twice Reuben rushed ahead with the kids once more, but then there was a sudden wailing as he found himself in the middle of an army of small biting ants and needed rescuing. Sue pointed out that she wasn't bitten by the ants because she had tucked her trousers in her socks before setting off, but I hadn't been so wise. In fact my other close contact with wildlife in the forest was to catch nits! Eeeurgh. I thought it was just school children who got nits.

Reuben and Miriam were the first white kids that most people in the village had ever seen. They were centre of attention. Reuben doesn't always respond well to lots of attention, but they loved it.  
 

 It was classic free and simple village life, as experienced by children in any country.

As Reuben gained confidence he roamed out of sight with a pack of children. All of them kept turning up with peanuts freshly picked and roasted on the fire. Reuben and Miriam shared raisins in return. The boys taught Reuben to use a catapult, and laughed uproariously when he held it pointing at himself the first time. He went with them whilst they shot down some birds and kept one beautiful colourful bird on a string. We had a few discussions on animal rights at that point!

  

They picked maize from the fields and his friend roasted it on the fire for him. The kids spoke enough French that they could chat away with no problem. The books we'd brought for Reuben and Miriam were in French so they were appreciated by all, and the older kids made toys out of something like balsa wood which we bought to bring home. One of them had made a toy generator (there's no electricity in the village apart from the project's generator) with a battery inside and wires coming out to a light bulb.

This is Reuben and his friend in the church in the village.

We'd watched a documentary following a semi nomadic Baka family in the forest (the non-accepted way of referring to them is as  'pygmies'). The follow up should be on BBC 2 next month (we hosted a showing of the first one by WWF and the film maker whilst he was here shooting the follow up). One of the scenes had been about them climbing 40m trees in order to gather honey. When we saw beehives in this village they also talked about their parents eating wild honey from the tall trees. However, as I waited to hear about the idyllic symbiotic tale of following honey guides and climbing huge trees he told me that they cut down the trees to get the honey!

Sue and I tasted the palm wine, which was freshly tapped from this palm tree. Neither of us were hugely keen on trying it, but it was quite sweet and quite a nice surprise compared to palm wine I've had before (not a nice enough surprise that we asked for a second taste).

One of the kids climbed the tree to get us a cocoa pod. 

On the second night in the village a villager came to talk to us about some of the local traditions. He talked about how the villages were formed and named and about how marriages were arranged and celebrated. Marriages were arranged by men drawing a red cross on the belly of a pregnant woman and declaring that if the baby were a girl it would be his son's wife/his grandson's wife or even his own wife! When I was talking about this with a friend afterwards, she said that her parents' marriage was planned in a similar way before her Mum was born. Nowadays people are more likely to choose their own husband or wife, although in both cases it seems that the marriages are fairly temporary. The tradition is that the kids stay with their Father when the Mother moves out, so of course the Fathers need to remarry really soon because there needs to be a woman in the house. Peter, our driver, was with us (there was no way I was going to drive the three hours along bumpy roads which I didn't know and over the terrible bridges). He's from the North West, and was quite outraged at this. He blamed it squarely on the men. He said if they weren't so quick to take new wives then the women would learn to stay with their first husbands. They had a heated and lengthy discussion on the subject. He was as much a foreigner as we were in many ways, but more forthright about the rights and wrongs of behaviour! He also poured scorn on traditions in Yaounde (also not his area) by which the family of the bride keep receipts for all the bride's schooling and medical care and add them up so that their expenses could be reimbursed by the groom's family!

Richard and Barton, on their way back through apparently had a fuller demonstration of marriage tradition and were paired off with two of the older women of the village!

On the walk back out of the forest we saw the most amazing spider's web, trailing down from high up in the trees, with lots of spiders in it. Also at one point we heard a very noisy flapping sound, and looked to see a huge bird bigger than any bird of prey I've ever seen. It was strange and particularly because it's wings were the shape of the wings of a bat.

Reuben and Miriam enjoyed the walk.

Reuben wore one of Miriam's tops! He refused to wear button up shirts and he had gone through all his other long sleeve tops. Pink and purple are his favourite colours, so he was very happy.

  

Tim, Richard and Barton arrived back safe and sound. Here was their 'team photo' as they left.

A while after coming back to Yaounde I looked through the whole bird book to try to figure out what strange kind of bird we'd seen in the forest. At the end of the book it dawned on me that, of course, it had had wings like a bat because it WAS a bat! I'm used to big fruit bats, but this was in a different league. I'd not realised bats could be that big.