Leaving Mamfe

We spent 2 days in Mamfe finalising the preparations for going out to Ote in Akwaya district. Our current major project in Cameroon is linked with Forudef NGO and is based in Buea in the south and Ote village in Akwaya with honey trading and beekeeping projects running. The trip felt like an expedition and preparations were exiting for both us and the Cameroonians who described us as 'going into the bush'. It felt like something from a previous era and a long way from a taxi to the airport followed by a busy easy jet flight. We have to take everything with us, while remaining light enough to carry what we needed on our backs if needs be, so the last few days had been a blur of markets and planning. 

We found a shop selling biscuits and cartons of juice

They also had lamps, pots and pans and every type of hardware you could imagine

A vehicle was hired and in addition to we three English Bees Abroad workers, and two Forudef  workers  we will take extra fare paying passengers once were are all loaded up to save costs. Everything in Cameroon takes longer than expected, and out car arrived only an hour late (to our surprise) at 7.30 on what was an already warm morning. 

Loading the vehicle in the Mamfe bus station known as 'The Park'

We loaded the luggage, including a large Cassava frying pan, which splits into two, measuring about 1m x 1.5m with sides raising 150cm at a 45degree angle out from the base. There is a steel base into which a stainless steel top fits into. The steel base is in contact with the fire while the stainless steel pan with cassava in sits on top- this is so that the cassava does not burn or discolour and the pan does not rust. This is to accompany the cassava grinder that had coated us in the sticky pulp a few days ago when we tried it out, but which the workshop owner assured us would be fixed next week. This is part of a project that Forudef (the locally based Cameroonian NGO we are working with) will be running for a women’s cooperative to produce Garri (a type of dough popular in west African made from fermented cassava) to sell to local villages and their own community. The mechanisation will allow increased production as the whole process is currently done by hand.The whole project was devised by Matt and Mischa, two Canadians who came to work with Forudef last year and travelled out to Ote with us in March 2011.

Forudef hopes to create a market in Ote so that people in the neighbouring villages will come  to Ote to trade. The village can sell the Garri and other farm produce which Forudef will work with them to develop, and so will allow the village to grow. Currently most people wanting to trade will travel many miles (as far as Mamfe over 50miles away) to trade, but the hope is to create a market town closer and attract people to stay in the region rather than move to large towns. This allows other towns to come and trade what they make and will enrich the area. This plan is voiced daily by the people we meet, and they are looking to us to help them in this project. It does feel good to be working alongside a Cameroonian charity and development NGO whose members are from the communities in which we are working and so really know what it is that can help. It is just a good thing that the plans of Forudef, the villages of Ote and surrounding village and Bees Aboard fit so closely, and we are able to help Ote realise there initiative. 

Rain Like No Other

Although it is still technically the dry season, the rains have started.  Our first night in Mamfe the thunder and lightning was incredible.

I went outside to experience the rain, it was like something from a film, incredibly atmospheric!

The night was totally pitch black with no moon or stars and I couldn’t see a foot in front of me because there was a power cut so no electric lights anywhere for miles. You could feel the rain though, it was absolutely torrential and in minutes i was soaked- I've never experienced rain like it. The downpour only lasted about half an hour and drizzled on for about the same again, but the noise on the tin roofs of our hotel and the surrounding buildings was deafening, no one could sleep.  There was no light, even in our hotel, but we sat together in the dark of the hotel listening to the rain and watching great forks of lighting cut access the black sky. Outside the hotel the ground rushed with water so that it sounded like great rivers were flowing right past our door!

On waking in the morning however the sun was shining and all evidence of the rain was gone, it couldn’t have been more of a contrast from the night before.  Only the dirt tracks showed any sign of the previous day, walking on them the red mud stuck to our feet and some vehicles that had been moving around early had picked it up and spread it thinly across the tarmac when they joined the made roads.

We had lunch on our balcony overlooking the beautiful Cross River.  It really is so beguiling but the view, while serene, is a fascinating hub of activity on this particular day.  We were overlooking large flat barge boats with teams of boys who swim down to dredge up the gravel brought down by the floods that is now lying on the river bed.  Their work is back breaking.  They dive down with a large flat metal pan, and bring it up heaped with sand before offload it into the barge and disappearing back into the depths for more.  Once the whole barge is filled it is taken to the edge and emptied by other boys who shovel as if their life depends on it, creating a heap on the river bank. Several groups of boys work like this before a small lorry comes down and moves between groups collecting the sand.  when it draws close to each group, the boys start shovelling as fast as they can into the lorry above them filling it, and once it has made the round of all the groups and is filled it snakes up the steep climb of the river cliff, to the road.

The boys getting the gravel never stop and as soon as their load is on the lorry the other boys also return to work.  They must be paid by the load, but speculating, the conditions look terrible and the work very hard, and no doubt the pay is very poor.  Quite unlike anything we are used to. We saw the gravel later when we made a last run to the internet cafe in the builder's yard, where it was piled high.

Cooking lessons and Packing for The Rainforest

We had to make another trip to the market to get the last few fresh things for our trip.  little red peppers that are quite hot, green beans, batteries for torches, bread, fresh tomatoes and eggs...which we will hard boil.  The market was bustling and the best thing I've heard all trip was when we declined to buy one ladies goods and  she cried 'oh I like it you are just eye shopping'!  

After the market we headed over to the Forudef offices where i gave the neighbour who we knew from last year and had cooked for us, a bag that i had bought from home along with some photographs of everybody taken on that trip and had printed. The whole family were overwhelmed, it was really nice to see them so happy, i obviously got it right on the present front! Gill (another beekeeper and a doctor in our group) and I then had a cooking lesson from the women where they showed us how they cook the beans and tomatoes, we had bought from the market, ready for the trip. The only problem was that four people prepared the food which our host Lucy then took 3 hours to cook! We had to leave the food simmering while we went to attend the bees...we will have to find a way to make the recipe quicker when we are in the forest.

For anyone interested the recipe consisted of the following: build and light a medium sized fire, place 3 large flat topped stones to rest the pot on around the flames, then sit on the floor and chop, wash and sort the vegetables (very time consuming without the mod cons of chopping boards, work-surfaces and sinks!), then add to water in the pan and cook for several hours. It made us realise how much you use a sink and running water when you’re cooking! and how wonderful it is to do all this standing up instead of on your knees in the dirt.

We wouldn’t be able to carry all our things into the rainforest and we needed to travel light in case we had to walk long distances (if the road/ vehicle failed us!) so we organised where we would leave things and what to take and organised where we would meet our driver for the journey which would start at 6am the day after tomorrow (all starts in Cameroon seem to be early ones!). To get from Mamfe to Ote is only about 50miles but the road runs out a short way form Mamfe so it will be mud tracks from there on out with numerous rivers to ford, so we expect that it will take about 6hours to get to Ote hence the early start.

We were all aware of what might be in the water, but Gill being a GP was most concerned about water borne parasites and pathogens we could easily encounter that could cause us severe problems when we are deep in the jungle, or even after our return to the UK, so we plan to avoid all contact with water on our trip including not to get out of the truck at all when we were crossing the rivers so as to minimise the very present risk.

The Road to Mamfe

We have travelled north from Buea to Kumba by tarmac road with innumerable potholes in a crowded minibus with all our belongings strapped to the roof. All the drivers in the area have been on strike in protest to the government for failing to maintain the road, and so we waited some time to make the journey. 

Some sections of the route have become so bad that drivers refuse to take the main road, instead heading off towards nigeria and the through the top of the Korup and Ekok national parks. This meant driving on small tracks through areas of rainforest which were absolutely textbook examples of layered canopy, any (ex) geography teacher’s idea of heaven! And we were able to drool over the landscape uninterrupted for miles. 

The road underneath was patchy and uneven, sometimes disappearing in mud and craters so deep, and water filled, that they seemed impassable. The wet season wasn’t to start for another month; we had experienced heavy downpours uncharacteristically early, but we were assured that the mud got much worse than this and so we pressed on. We made relatively rapid, and dust free, progress (an advantage of the rain i suppose) but hurtling over wooden plank bridges in crammed full minibuses at 60mph can get a little hairy!

It was a little sad to see trucks heading along the road laden with several mighty trees, easily 3 or 400 years old, when the only signs of tree planting was new rubber and palm oil trees; hardly aforestation though tactically agroforestry i suppose.

En route we tried to pick up a cassava grinder to take to the Ote, the village we were heading to in the rainforest, but the only one we could find just sprayed ground cassava across the whole workshop and covered all the mechanics, and us, with the white pulp...everyone was completely in hysterics and it was certainly an ice breaker between the locals and the us but it just didn’t seem practical to take!  The owner assured us that with some adjustments it would be perfect, but it wouldn’t be ready till next week. 

At Kumba we swapped our cramped bus for a car and headed for the un-surfaced road north to Mamfe.  All our luggage was stuffed into and on top of the boot of a battered old car with a UK number plate.  On the top of the luggage below the lid was the cassava frying pan to hold everything in tightly.  Already at Kumba and out of the mountains surrounding Buea we could feel the temperature and humidity rising, back up to about 30 deg.





The arrival at Mamfe was very welcome; we checked into the same hotel as last year, the Data, which commands a promontory overlooking the river, which snakes way below sleepily towards Nigeria. It has a lovely shady restaurant and some seating under grass roofed shelters in the garden surrounded by lovely flowering trees full of birds, and a very proud cockerel that struts around. It is the place all the Chinese engineers and contractors, who are building the road west east from Nigeria as part of the Trans African highway, go to eat so can get very busy. Although the heat is about 30 deg now it feels less, there is shade, a working fridge and some cold drinks (you would be surprised how often the two are not linked in Cameroon) although tonight there is no power in town so there is no light or water. 

We were able to relax from the long journey and shower from a bucket with a half water bottle cut to make a cup. We met a worker we did a bee keeping course with last year who will be joining our ever expanding party to the rainforest. It was a really warm reunion and we spent much of the evening catching up on news over dinner which we bought him; we insisted on paying and when he saw the bill he was astonished although there were 4 of us it came to around 20,000 CFA (about £25.00) which was over half the man’s monthly salary.

Everyone was tired from the journey so we all had an early night.