Cameroons Extreme North region is a good place for hiking and for visiting some small traditional villages. So as usual I travel on market days when public transport is a bit more frequent. The first stop is Mokolo a pretty nice town on the route to the Mandara mountains, I get chatting to a nice guy on the bus called Francois, we pop round to his for some lunch, drinks and a bit of a chat. He invites me to stay over at theirs, unfortunately I had to move on to the slightly more remote town of Rhumsiki as transport would be pretty difficult tomorrow. I just caught the last car heading out that way, and had a great drive on the back of a crowded pick up truck through some great scenery with the sun setting in the distance. We had to push the truck up a few of the bigger hills, but there were enough of us, and everyone had a good laugh.
It was dark by the time I arrived at my simple lodgings in Rhumsiki (Kirdi Bar), the owner is a great guy and a good cook too, so he sorted me out with dinner. Its always fun arriving somewhere at night, when you wake up in the morning not knowing what to expect, the view from Rhumsiki is pretty special. Unfortunately because of this, and despite its remoteness, quite a few tourists come here on guided trips and so it is slightly spoilt. The locals are always on the search for something, I had to bunk a fence and sneak into town to avoid being followed by annoying kids.
I wanted to go trekking for a few days, Its not normally my style but I decided to take on a local guide - Anatole. We had a good early start and on our first day headed breifly into Nigeria, the border runs through the base of the valley. The villages around here are some of the most traditional I have seen so far. There is very little sign of western influence, practically no mass manufactured goods, plastics etc. The people live off subsistence farming and like in many parts of Africa just one large meal a day, in this case a massive bowl of couscous in the evening.
We walked pretty far on day one, It was pretty hot and I was amazed how much water I drank in the arid heat, around six or seven litres and I was still thirsty. We eventually stumbled across a small market, where we stopped for some local red millet beer which is drunk warm, and also brought a few local whiskys for the chief. We finished the walk with a slight beer buzz and arrived at the small town of Roufta at the base of a fairly high mountain, here we slept and had dinner with a local family.
The next morning we are sitting on our mat tucking into breakfast when a snake (big worm), gets pretty close to Anatoles hand (incidentally he only has one), the snake is quickly dispatched with a stick and then burnt on the fire.
We weren’t due to walk as far for the second day, which was a welcome break. In the first village Anatole suggests we buy a white beer (a strong local spirit), he claims it gives you good power for walking, I argue otherwise for a short while, then agree, just a little for myself though. It helped in that it numbs your entire body so you cant feel the pain and aches anymore.
Anatole was definitely liking it and stopping in nearly every small village for another. Sure enough after a slightly longer session with the Blacksmith and village Chief, I get up to carry on, Anatole trys but falls flat on his face, we are about ten kilometres from home still. Eventually with a splash of cold water we get him walking again, but not very convincingly. It was funny at first, a bit like a night out in Macc, but after the first couple of kilometres it got pretty tiresome, so I walked ahead to try and influence a bit of pace - the sun was getting low.
Eventually we made it back to Rhumsiki, at the village one of Anatoles friends informed him that his wife had badly burnt her arm. Anatole instantly put two and two together and blamed it on the snake from this morning. If we hadn’t burnt the snake, his wife wouldnt of burnt herself, he was adamant and quite vocal about this ( it wasnt drunk logic but animist logic). Everyone looked to me for what to do - great, I looked to the St Johns Ambulance book which i’ve been lugging around for five months for what to do. Hold on the Savlon apparently, plenty of cool water and then apply a dressing, which I did, then seek medical attention. All fair and well in England, but out here the medical attention is a ninety year old blind man with a pot full of crabs!
