If only the Fon had nachos…

Sunday morning I left the house quite early to meet Heather and Kat so we could go to Pinyin. I was told by people in the office that it was at most a 20 minute drive away. On my way to meet them, I ran into Celestine on his bike. He gave me a ride to the roundabout we were meeting at and told me he’d take us to the motor park. If you want to go outside of Bamenda, you have to go to the appropriate “Motor Park” to find the right taxi. They are similar to bus stops, but usually only have run down yellow sedans. To get to Pinyin we had to go to the Bali motor park on the west side of town. The car was going to cost us 1200 CFA each one way (7200 CFA roundtrip for the three of us, which is around $14.50). Ok, not a huge amount, but in terms of costs here, it seemed really steep. So we called a driver who Heather and Kat had met and asked him how much to take us; we figured it would be about the same price but quicker and less crammed. I don’t think he would go below 10,000 or something, so we decided it would be too expensive for a half day trip. The night before the owner of the Royal Restaurant, Awah, had told me to check out Chomba, so I asked how much to there. He said 300 CFA one way (about 60 cents). So we decided to go check it out.

Awah told me to go to the Fon’s palace to ask them to provide us with a guide to show us where to find the cave and waterfall. An older man came out and agreed to show us, but warned us it was quite a hike. We called him Pa. He shook his head when he saw Kat and my flipflops—apparently we were not dressed appropriately for the hike. Heather immediately began cursing me and my physical activities that I always drag her into; ever since Station Mountain she won’t do anything that sounds physically challenging. This time I just lucked out; I had no idea we were going to get to go hiking.

The first stop on our little walk was the shrine for the ancestors in Chomba. There was a long wall made from grasses weaved together with a small entry way in the center with dried grasses hanging over it. Only some of the distinguished elders in the community can enter the area behind the wall, where the ancestors live. When sacrifices are made to the ancestors, the animals (usually fowls and goats) are put on the other side of the wall for the ancestors to take. Apparently, the ancestors also spend a lot of time in one of the pools at the bottom of one of their waterfalls.

We walked for about an hour and a half or so before reaching the waterfalls. There were two large rivers that came together in the valley. It was really gorgeous. We stopped for a few photos—well, quite a few photos actually. I forgot to mention, when we started our walk we asked our driver, Gilbert, if he wanted to join us or stay in Chomba. He decided to join us and turned out to be a really nice and hilarious guy. So, in my photos on smugmug, that’s who the younger guy is in some of the photos. He was starting to get really tired and kept asking how much longer, haha, and joking around with Heather about being so tired and stuff. After the waterfalls, we kept walking to make our way to the caves.

The pathway into the cave was completely grown over; I’m not sure that many people have been to see the caves recently. The cave was pretty big and somewhat open. The river ran through the center of the cave. It was cool and peaceful in there; if there weren’t so many mosquitos in there, we probably would have stayed longer. On the walk back, we went by a ‘bridge’ made of a couple skinny branches lying across the river. We decided to check our balancing skills and walk across. Kat, Gilbert and I made it over pretty easily; it was a little futile, because we just had to go back over again once we reached the other side. I have little faith in my ability to cross that river with 20 litres of water on my head, a kid on my back and when the river and wind are roaring in the rainy season like many of the locals in this area do with ease.

On the walk down, Gilbert decided to teach Kat how to go down hills—run. Every time there was a downhill, we would run, while Pa yelled to Gilbert to be careful. He was holding Heather’s hand and telling her to go slow and carefully. We stopped at one point and Pa asked if we liked guava. He disappeared into the bushes and was all of a sudden standing on a flimsy branch at the top of a guava tree jumping and shaking the tree to make the fruit fall. Keep in mind this man is in his late 50s or so. It was pretty funny; he came back with his pockets and shirt bursting with guavas. We all grabbed a few and had a snack for the walk down. Kat and I began talking about all the food we wanted to have when we got down. Mainly, we focused on nachos with sour cream, salsa, and guacamole, with some cold beers. We decided we would go for beers once we got down and take Gilbert with us. Jokingly we said that the Fon of Chomba would probably be waiting at the bottom for us with cold beer and nachos. Cold beer is nearly impossible to find here; even in places that have fridges, they hardly ever have cold beer.

Once we were down, Pa took us to meet the Fon. He said we should have brought him a present of whiskey or something similar. I think he was expecting us to say we would go to town first and then come back, because after we said we had nothing he seemed to imply we would just meet the Fon next time then. A younger guy came out and told us it was fine if we had nothing, the Fon still wanted to meet us. We went into the Fon’s meeting area, there were two large chairs with elephant tusks and leopard skins in front of both. The Fon came in and sat in one of the chairs; when he entered we stood and bowed our heads. He asked us about where we were from and what kind of work we were doing. He was really interested in microfinance and GHAPE; he asked me about average loan sizes, interest payments and loan repayment schedules. Then, the younger man that had led us to the meeting room came in with a tray of cold beer. I couldn’t believe it. We were having cold beer with the Fon of Chomba.

In order to help people understand you here, you simplify your sentences so it sounds more like Pidgin. Things like “I am going to go into town for a bit now” are changed to “I go town now. Shortly.” Anyway, when we were talking to the Fon, Kat was using her simplified, you don’t understand me, English, haha. Heather started squeezing her arm to make her realize. The Fon was quite educated; he used to work for one of the ministries in the Northwest Province and was college educated. He was fluent in English. I don’t think he noticed really, but hard to say.

On the drive back to the city, Gilbert had driving lessons. Kat and Heather had never driven standard, so they practiced on Gilbert’s car on the drive back. It was pretty hilarious. We went to Alizane, a restaurant downtown, for beers and food. We paid for Gilbert to drink and have some lunch. On the drive back to Kat and Heather’s we tried to figure out how much we owed him. We figured with Chomba each way being 300, plus the drive to each of houses being around 200 to 300 each, it shouldn’t be more than 1200. We decided to offer 3000 CFA. He told us we were supposed to pay 1500 CFA per hour, and calculated that we had been together for 6 hours. Of course he included the hour we spent at the restaurant. The drive to Chomba took us about 40 to 45 min and was supposed to be 300 CFA, so, I’m not sure how he calculated 1500 per hour. Kat and Heather left it to me to argue with Gilbert, we finally agreed/gave up and decided on 8000 CFA ($16 USD). Not a huge amount, but more than it would have cost to go to Pinyin, and a lot more than 300 each way as we were told. Oh well. It was a pretty fabulous day regardless.