Fifty Wives
The trip to northern portion of Cameroon was simply amazing. We met people and saw sights that were incredible. The number of different cultures was like nothing I have seen before and is the big draw to that part of this country. I’ll have to write about all of them, but I thought I would discuss the oudest people that we met first. I didn’t misspell oddest in the last sentence because these people live in the village of Oudjilla. Oudjilla has a chief who we met and he is famous throughout Cameroon because he has 50 wives!
We drove through the village and up a very steep mountain to get to the chief’s palace. The road is a goat trail and I wondered when we would get stuck and have to walk, but our driver coaxed the vehicle all the way up. During the drive through the village, we passed people headed to the market most of whom were carrying goods on their heads to be sold or traded. Almost everyone smiled and waved at us yelling “Bon Jour!” or “Nasara!” (foreigner in Cameroon – but they definitely assume anyone black like Pamela is local so this greeting was particularly for me just as “Gringo!”, “Mzungu!” and “Faranji!” are yelled in other countries). Almost all of the people headed to the market were women and children. The men go later in the day to drink the local beer (bili bili) after working through the day. The women are all (in the small towns and villages of northern Cameroon, we only saw one woman in trousers so I mean ALL) dressed in long, extremely colorful and patterned dresses unlike any I have seen in Africa before. (note: some of this is a repeat from the prior post due to because I had too many open stories going at one time, but since emphasizing this is OK by me I am leaving it as it is…) The Tanzanian Swahili people’s dresses do not compare to what we have seen in Cameroon and I suspect all of West Africa is just as amazing. One thing very different about the women in Cameroon is that they love to smile and wave. The best images I take away from Cameroon are the tall, beautiful women in their flowing dresses with matching head wraps with the biggest white-toothed smiles and glittering eyes looking so happy to be alive. I will never understand how these women can keep themselves and their beautiful dresses so clean in a land of dirt and dust and hard work.
We made it up to the top of the tallest hill in this area near the Nigerian border. The palace is like nothing I have ever seen. It is basically a sprawling compound of mud cylinders with peaked roofs made of grass or grain stalks. The chief was there to greet us in his bright blue boubou the normal clothing of the Islamic people in this part of Africa even though he is an animist. Christians, the third group, also wear these same clothes and our guide, Abdou, who is Muslim said he finds it difficult to know what religion a person follows just from sight. This is different than the story in Ethiopia where they know the difference between a Muslim and Christian by dress although I never got those differences other than a cross hanging around the neck. Nicely, all three groups get along well in northern Cameroon with some families having members in two of the three groups. The chief of Oudjilla is 79 years old. His forefathers have been chiefs of Oudjilla for hundreds of years. This chief took over when his father passed away maybe 30 years ago. We met many of his wives when we toured the compound. They are as young as 23 years old and many looked to be close to his age. The chief and his wives have had over 200 children although many died due to malaria and he now has 120 living offspring. The second oldest son is in line to become the next chief. The chief is a very happy and smiley man as you might imagine.
Each wife has a “home” in the compound consisting of four mud cylinders which are spaces for living/sleeping, food preparation and two granaries. The two cylinders for grain have openings near the grass roof rather than the ground level in order to keep animals out. The cylinders are quite tall and the area where they reside is an interesting maze to walk though. The first wife’s home was denoted with some markings on the outside; otherwise, I saw no difference compared to the other forty-nine. Cooking is done in small, primitive charcoal stoves outside of the food preparation cylinder. Most of their food consists of grains served like porridge.
The views over the chief’s kingdom were very impressive even with the harmattan winds bringing in the sands from the Sahara. All of the villages looked fairytale-ish with their tall, mud cylinders topped with grass roofs sitting amongst the terraced hills. They live I in a very rocky place, but they seem to eek out a good enough harvest using all of their terraced lands.
When we were leaving, the chief asked for a ride to the bottom of the hill where he would stay the night to do something the following day. Of course, we were more than happy to take him. He sat in the front and was quite jovial. As soon as we approached anyone, they would look up to greet the nasara vehicle, but then their eyes would bulge and they would start laughing or cheering as soon as they saw their chief in the front seat. He spoke to quite a few of them as we went and it was quite obvious that he is well liked and respected by the 30-50,000 people that live in the eighteen villages that make up his chiefdom. Apparently, if the chief chooses your daughter to be another one of his wives, the family considers it a great honor and always agrees. We said goodbye after dropping him off at a relative’s home… or was it a potential number 51’s home?
Tags: Africa, cameroon
vagabondrick
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