History
A long time ago Chad’s basin was the origin of many important African civilisations. Since the XI century the presence of Islam favoured the creation of really complex State structures, and this made this region different from the southern areas inhabited by countless bantú tribes which, despite having historical and cultural relationships between them, never created complete political structures. This was the Cameroon found by the XV century European settlers.
Even though European presence appeared in the XV century, as well as in most of African regions, the European presence only consisted of some commercial points in the seaside. It was only in the second half of the XIX century when the European colonizers attempted to settle in the interior regions of Africa. This is how the domination of native people began. In 1884, Cameroon was annexed to Germany and the colonial period began. Cameroon, as many other African countries, was designed from Berlin, London or Paris, and arbitrary lines were set on the African map. This was the origin of today’s African country borderlines, which do not relate at all with existing geographical, cultural or political divisions.
Since the end of the XIX century, presbiterian, baptist and catholic missionaries began to arrive to Cameroon, and they would be responsible of the introduction of European culture.
After the First World War, German regions in Africa were given to war winners as a reward. Cameroon was divided between English and French governments. The English part consisted of the areas next to Nigeria, and France owned the rest iof Cameroon.
One of this century’s important men was Njoya, the fon of Bamum. He was a weird mixture of erudite and natural leader. Njoya had developed his own writing system, and following this system he had written down the history of his country, agriculture treaties and learning methods for his citizens. Apart from trying to join Christianity and Islam in a new religion, he kept in contact with most of world country’s leaders by mail. These activities were considered dangerous by the colonial French government and Njoya was obliged to abdicate, dying in the exile.
After the Second World War, a colonies are quickly abolished in Africa and in 1960 Cameroon became independent. But before the independence process England made a popular referendum in the English regions of Cameroon to see if people want to belong to the new State of Cameroon or to neighbour country Nigeria. As a result of this referendum the northern regions were annexed to Nigeria and the southern coast region joined the new State of Cameroon Confederation. In Cameroon the English-speaking and French-speaking regions kept some autonomy between them.
In 1972, the Cameroon’s Confederation was replaced by the United Republic of Cameroon. This unification process had negative effects on some regions and institutions. On the one hand, English-speaking minority regions saw how most of political power went to French-speaking people, and English-speaking minorities thought their wish would not be represented in the new government. On the other hand, the new Constitution, which was much more centralist than the Confederate’s Constitution, abolished political and administrative power of traditional authorities.
Since the government of President Paul Biyam who replaced the first President Ahidjo, uprisings and revolts happened one next to the other in all Cameroon, and Cameroon Government agreed on a new Constitution which gave back some administrative ability to regions who had this autonomy in Confederation years.
It is easy to understand that these problems in internal administration were a legacy of the colonial period. As an example, we can see the division between English-speaking and French-speaking people. A more subtle example is the permanent economical abuse of Cameroon by the ancient colonial owners, which blocks the commercial and industrial development of Cameroon.
Population and culture in Cameroon
Ethnic groups:
Cameroon’s population is composed nowadays by more than 230 ethnic groups, divided depending on dialects and divided up in a great mixture of races, cultures and different ways to interpret the world. The five greatest groups are:
- Bantú people, established in the southern, seaside, south-west, middle and south-east regions consisting of beti, bassa, duala, vambassa, maka, kaka, bakweri, bali…
- Semibantu people, established in western and north-west regions consisting of bemileké, bamun, tikar, bali…
- Sudanese people, established in the provinces of Adamaoua, in the north and extreme northern areas, consisting of mundang, tupuri, kotoko, kapsiki, mandara, haussa, matakam, bornuam, massa…
- Peulh people, established in the same areas than sudanese people.
- Arabic choa people, established in the Chad lake’s basin.
The most ancient cultural groups in the region nowadays known as Cameroon are the groups called “Pigmy people”, composed by baka, eastern and southern bakola, bagieli and bedzam of the Tikar plains. Pigmy people are supposed to be over 50000 people.
Along centuries different civilisations kept arriving to Cameroon, displacing the ancient settlers to more remote and inaccessible areas. The most important groups have been the nomadic ranching musulman peul or Fulani that arrived from the northern regions, and the bantú-speaking people that arrived to Cameroon from the southern region of Congo river.
The western region of Cameroon, also known as the “Grasslands”, is a proof of the meeting of different races and cultures. This area is inhabited by semi-bantú groups, which are a mixture between aboriginal sudanese people and southern bantú people.
Another example would be the “urban”fulanis, who abandoned their ranching nomad way of life and settled in urban regions, mixing with sudanese people already established in urban areas. Despite the important presence of values inherited from the European colonialism, like the Christian religion, occidental clothing and capitalist economy, Cameroon people are still linked to traditional values like the “great” family or the animist creed. If we had to identify the most traditional ethnic groups in Cameroon, living apart of the modern world influence, we can put emphasize on three ethnic groups:
Baka pygmy
People living in the tropical rainy forest keep in contact with its indomitable and mysterious nature. For some people it is a dark world, in a fragile ecological equilibrium which must be respected and venerated. For some other people, it represents a chance to clear it and obtain field for farming. And still some people pretend to destroy it.
Between those living in harmony with the forest there are the south-east Cameroon bakas, which are called Pygmy because of its reduced height. They keep on living according to its nomad tradition, hunting and recollecting all around the forest during most of the year. They also spend part of the year living in transitory camps next to the bantús, who are sedentary farmers.
Bantús give Baka people bananas, macabo and cassava (non-essential food, but really valued for the Bakas), and Bakas trade this for meat and honey they get from the forest. Apart from that, Baka people help Bantú people fight against the forest, a terrible and fast enemy that permanently threatens to invade Bantú’s cultivations.
In fact the reason why Bakas are so bad farmers is the daily fight against forest growth.
Their main philosophy is the immediate benefit based on luck, the forest knowledge and their skills. Painted with a red substance called ngélé, taken from a tree (Pterocarpus soyauxii), Bakas hunt many different animals, from small antelopes to elephants, wild pigs and gorillas. Their economy is based in products that can be instantly obtained, made and destroyed.
They obtain music instruments, strings, bowls for fruits and honey, materials for their huts and medicines from abroad.
Nowadays, because of the tree felling of primary forests and the sedentary style imposed by the State, Baka people are facing deep changes in their traditional way of life as many other nomad groups all around the world. Those interested in this culture must go deep into the thick forest of south-east Cameroon, where the last nomad families of Baka pygmy live.
Farming Fulani people or Mbororos
Some Fulani groups from Northern Cameroon proudly continue living in their ancestral way of life. Even though most of the Fulani or peul people have become sedentary in villages or towns, some hundreds of them keep on living with their bovine and goat herds through valleys and mountains. In contrast with the sedentary Fulani, nomad Fulani or Mbororos do not care about religion or power. They just pay taxes to the owners of fields where their animals eat and they sell lactic products in weekly markets. Another characteristic of Mbororos is that they never marry other ethnic groups to keep their blood pure and their special physical characteristics. Most of the Mbororos are tall and thin, with clear skin, hooked nose and curly hair. They usually spend many hours taking care of their appearance: they wear complex braids and face marks, no matter if men or women. Because of their nomad living style, it is not easy to find one of their spherical tents camp. The best strategy to find them is meeting a group of their women in some of the North’s countryside weekly markets and following them to the Mbororos camp. When you arrive to a camp, you have to meet the Jahoro or clan’s leader before you are allowed to have a look at their interesting and ephemeral architecture.
Koma people
Many different ethnic groups live in the mountains and rough high lands that exist between the southern areas of the great lap of the Niger river and the high mountains between Blue Nile and White Nile in Sudan. These groups are very different, but all of them have taken shelter in those mountains and high land escaping from the nations and powerful states from the Southern green region and the Islamic states from the Low Lands and northern regions. The Koma, or lost people in kanurri language, are a good example of this.
This farming people hide in the Alantika mountains (Northern Cameroon-Nigeria borderline) to escape from slavery and Islam imposed by the Muslim ranching invaders. In their small villages hidden between granite rocks of Mount Alantika the Koma have been able to keep their animist creed, based on their ancestors’ cult, their dancing and their most-valuable food: millet beer or “bil-bil”. In the beginnings of the new millennium Koma people clutch to their geographical isolation. Maybe ancient dangers from the Low Lands have disappeared, but new threats have appeared for Koma people.
The increasing number of tourists that come to visit one of modern Africa’s last frontiers, missionaries with specific plans for this “pagan” people and administration’s not always bad aim “schools, public health”… These are many radical changes for a group of people who have decided to avoid the progress train.
Religion
In Cameroon, for every two Christian people there is one Muslim, and animist traditional creed is still very popular all along the country, sharing in some places the official religion status. Cameroon’s people cosmology keeps focused on the world of magic and spiritualism. A good example of this is the spread practice of witchcraft in both rural and urban areas.
Witchcraft
We separate Magic and Witchcraft in two different areas. When speaking about witchcraft, we refer to some specific evil powers which can be inherited that some people have, even though sometimes the affected person does not even know it. This powers and skills are used to damage people and their goods.
On the other side, we talk about Magic to refer to some techniques acquired by some people to act on nature, generally to create welfare in ill people, to assure a good harvest, to give protection in front of some threats… In this sense, magic sometimes is linked to medicine and future-telling. And all these concepts are also related to religion and mythology.
Witchcraft, a phenomenon existing all around the world, consists on some people, especially women, who have the unconscious skill of separating their soul from their body so that it can act independently. Their soul uses other bodies or objects as a vehicle to materialise and reach their objectives. This separating process takes place while the witch is sleeping and this power is usually used to hurt people, their goods, their family or their community.
The witch or wizard is not aware of what his spirit does and he doesn’t remember anything done by the spirit while the body was sleeping. They generally attack near people, especially members of their own family.
Their manifestations are always terrible and very varied: they can induce diseases, social disorders, make someone become alcoholic, sterile… But they can also act on nature causing climate disasters and changes on objects. To sum up we could say they are responsible for all misunderstood events.
For example, if one day in a village the “word house” collapses during the day affecting people inside the house and the accident causes some kind of disgrace to someone, people would say a witch or wizard caused the accident. In the village everybody is aware that buildings get older and they can fall is they are not repaired. Nevertheless, the extraordinary fact is that this disaster happens in a moment with some specific people inside the “word house”. If during a whole year there are many moments in which the old house is empty, why does it collapse in the moment there is some specific people inside? It is not a logical accident, so the reason must be an extraordinary force causing the disaster.
The most dangerous witches and wizards are those who got their power before being born, so they were born “bad”. Is tends to be hereditary so it is more frequent in some families.
They act in the night becoming some night birds to move (as the Tanzania’s sagala believe), becoming trees (between the kongo) that appear in a different place the next day, or becoming fireballs (between the Ghana’s hanga). They are usually cruel to a family member, for example a son, to whom they suck the life energy. After many nights sucking his health, the person gets ill and even dies.
It is not easy to discover a witch or wizard even though some signs can make someone become suspicious of witchcraft. Some of these signs are abundant hair in a woman’s chin, irregularly red eyes, stuttering, unsociable personality, exaggerate greed…
In almost all communities believing in witchcraft there is people specialised in discovering them. When a person suffers from a strange disease or sudden disgraces he turns to Magic or Future-telling to solve the problem which is supposed to be caused by a near witch or wizard.
Once a witch or wizard is discovered, the punishment depends on the region. Azande people socially isolate the witch or wizard. Ewe people, for example, have specialists that use techniques and long procedures of psychological and magical treatment to take the spiritual force out of the body of a witch.
Cameroon's languages
Even though French and English are the only official languages in Cameroon, travellers cannot forget the fact that Cameroon is one of the counties with a greatest variety of languages in the world, with more than 260 spoken languages.
The enormous mountainous areas that separate Cameroon and Nigeria are known by ethnologists as the “linguistic islands”. Those regions, usually smaller than the Ibiza Island, have a rich cultural and linguistic legacy which is threatened by the central government and NGO’s schooling programs. It happens because Cameroon only recognises colonial inherited languages (French and English) as prestigious languages for children to learn at school, and African languages are consigned to domestic use. Nowadays most of the people younger than 35 years old know many different languages, speaking different African languages at home and in the street, speaking perfect French and having a confident level in English. Furthermore, in the regions near Equatorial Guinea most people speak Spanish fluently.
To speak with Cameroon’s people it is necessary to speak French because it is spoken all along the country. English is only spoken in the Western regions and by young people who have been able to go to school.
Government and politics
President Paul Biya
Paul Biya, of the Popular Democratic Alliance (APDC) governs since 1982. APDC got control of the Parliament in 1992 and Biya was chosen again this year and in 1997. The main opposing group, the Socialdemocratical Front, has questioned the result of these elections. In 1997, their candidate John Ndi refused Biya’s victory.
Cameroon’s economy
Cameroon had one of sub-Saharan Africa’s richest economies, but after 1994’s devaluation of the country’s currency (CFA) the economy decreased. Despite all this, with the petrol richness and positive farming conditions it is a country with a good growth potential. Its GDP is 43196 US $ millions.
Farming
Cameroon’s main farming products are cocoa beans, café, bananas, cotton, palm oil and rubber trees. Generally speaking we could say Cameroon is alimentary self-sufficient.
As natural resources Cameroon has got: petrol, bauxite, iron, wood and hydraulic power. Hydroelectric industry fills the country’s needs. Big European plantations were created in the early 1900’s in the rich volcanic fields near Cameroon Mountain to cultivate bananas, cocoa, coffee and palms. These regions have become a model for the great national companies called agroindustrial.
In Cameroon two different kinds of coffee are collected: Robust coffee (cultivated in the eastern provinces) and Arabic coffee (cultivated in the heights of the western plateaus. Cotton culture dominates the northern regions and rice the northern and western areas.
Ranching is also important in Cameroon’s economy. In the beginning it was only practised by Peul people who did it in the area of Adamaoua and the northern-eastern regions.
Petrol
Petrol exploitation began in 1978. Cameroon was once an important petrol exporter. Despite this, its petrol reserves have decreased gradually. Nevertheless natural gas deposits have been identified near the seaside. The problem is that their exploitation is not easy.
Industry
Industry is quite poor in Cameroon. Nevertheless there are the following industries:
- Industries transforming farming products: cotton seeds, rice plantations, coffee industries.
- Textile and cotton industries, sugar refinery (Mbandjok), palm oil industry (in the southern-eastern areas and near the seaside) and the latex industry (Tiko) are the most important ones.
- Wood industries in Mbalmayo and Belabo. One of Cameroon’s most valuable exports is ebony, Mahogany and teak.
- Another important industry is the aluminium production in the Edea reservoir.
- Beer industries, always very active
Some industries have set up in Cameroon alter the independence.
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