StapleCameroon
Fufu Corn
Maize flour beaten into a smooth stiff paste, eaten with njama njama or huckleberry greens in the north-west. The standard plate of the Anglophone highlands.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
Bakweri
The people of Mount Cameroon — farmers on the slopes of Africa's most active volcano, whose ancestral land became German plantations and then a state corporation, and whose century-long claim to it has never been settled.
Identity
Population: Estimated over 100,000 in south-western Cameroon
Location: The slopes and foothills of Mount Cameroon around Buea and Limbe
Language: Mokpwe (Bakweri), with Cameroonian Pidgin English widely used
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (A20, Coastal)
Traditional governance: Chiefs and village councils recognised within Cameroon's traditional authority; the Bakweri Land Claims Committee has pursued the plantation claim internationally.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Buea-area communities
On the mountain's eastern slopes, at the former German colonial capital.
Limbe and coastal Bakweri
Communities at the foot of the mountain on the Atlantic.
Displaced plantation villages
Communities relocated when the plantations were established.
Culture
Clothing: Printed cloth and contemporary dress; the elephant and mask costumes of the Male society; white clay marking at ceremonies.
Food: Cocoyam, plantain, cassava and the volcanic soils' abundant produce; palm oil; fish from the coast; the mountain's fertility is the region's defining fact.
Ceremonies: The Ngondo-related water rites of the coastal peoples; the Male mask society; the annual Mount Cameroon Race of Hope, now a national sporting event on an ancestral mountain; funerals with masked appearance.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth in goods and cash; patrilineal descent; land, the community's central grievance, passes through the lineage.
Initiation rites: Entry into the Male and related societies; girls' seclusion and instruction in the older tradition.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Cameroon, at national rather than community level — 12 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
StapleCameroon
Koki Beans
also Koki corn, Ekoki
Black-eyed beans ground to a paste with palm oil and spinach, wrapped in banana leaf and steamed into a savoury pudding. A Cameroonian street and household staple.
Serves 8 · 2 hours, plus overnight soaking
National dishCameroon
Ndolé
Bitterleaf boiled repeatedly to draw out the bitterness, then cooked with ground groundnuts, shrimp and meat. Cameroon's national dish, from the Douala coast.
Serves 8 · 2 hours
National dishCameroon
Mbongo Tchobi
also Black stew, Sauce noire
Fish or meat in a jet-black sauce made from burnt spices — mbongo seed, country onion and njangsa — from the Bassa country around Edéa. Smoky, bitter and unlike anything else in Africa.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Street foodCameroon
Soya
Beef skewers rubbed in a groundnut and chilli spice mix and grilled over charcoal, sold from evening braziers across the north and in every Yaoundé quarter.
Serves Makes 12 · 40 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating
Festival & feastCameroon
Eru
Wild forest vine leaves shredded fine and cooked with waterleaf, palm oil and smoked fish, from the south-west. Made for celebrations and eaten with water fufu.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Festival & feastCameroon
Achu Soup
also Yellow soup, Taro fufu and yellow soup
Pounded taro served with a bright yellow palm-oil soup coloured with limestone, the ceremonial dish of Cameroon's North West grassfields, eaten with the fingers from a shared bowl.
Serves 8 · 2 hours 30 minutes
Regional specialityCameroon
Poulet DG
Chicken with fried ripe plantain and vegetables, whose name stands for Directeur Général because it was originally what you served a man of importance.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Regional specialityCameroon
Kondre
also Plantain and goat stew
Goat and unripe plantain stewed with country onion and njangsa until the plantain thickens the pot. A grassfields dish cooked for visitors and for the head of the household.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes
Regional specialityCameroon
Sanga
also Maize and cassava leaf
Fresh maize kernels cooked with cassava leaf and palm oil into a thick green-and-gold porridge. A Beti and southern Cameroonian dish of the maize harvest.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Drink & sweetCameroon
Foléré
Hibiscus juice with pineapple, ginger and mint, sold from freezers in the north and served cold at every celebration. Cameroon's name for what is bissap elsewhere.
Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus chilling
Drink & sweetCameroon
Bil-Bil
also Millet beer, Bilibili
Sorghum beer of northern Cameroon, brewed by women in great clay pots and sold from the compound door. Sour, cloudy and drunk from a shared calabash.
Serves Makes about 8 litres · 1 hour active, plus 4 days germinating and 3 days fermenting
Stories & Oral Literature
The Land ClaimLegal and political account
German colonisers expropriated the fertile volcanic slopes for plantations from the 1880s. After both world wars the estates passed to the Cameroon Development Corporation, a state body. The Bakweri Land Claims Committee has pressed for restitution for over a century, including at the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights. The plantations still occupy the ancestral land and the claim remains unresolved.
The Mountain of ThunderBelief and environment
Mount Cameroon, called Fako, is Africa's most frequently erupting volcano, and Bakweri tradition holds that a god named Efasa Moto, half man and half stone, lives on it. Eruptions are understood as his movement. Climbers make offerings before ascending, and the Race of Hope up the mountain each February is preceded by traditional rites as a matter of course.
Proverbs
“The mountain feeds and the mountain burns.”
Volcanic soil's gift and its price.
“A stranger planted and called the field his.”
The plantation expropriation.
“Ask Efasa Moto before you climb.”
The prohibition observed on the mountain.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: A creator god distant from affairs; Efasa Moto, the mountain god, as the immediate power; ancestors and water spirits of the coast active.
Beliefs: Mountain religion centred on Efasa Moto with offerings before ascent; the Male mask society; water spirits (mammy wata traditions on this coast); Christianity widespread, generally held alongside.
Ancestors: Ancestral graves on ground now inside plantation boundaries are central to the land claim's moral and legal case.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Efasa Moto
The mountain god, half man and half stone, whose movement is eruption
Water spirits
Powers of the Atlantic coast, honoured in the coastal rites
Ancestors
Consulted at the family shrine and in land matters
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages on the mountain slopes of block and timber with sheet roofing; Buea's German colonial buildings including the Schloss; plantation labour lines below.
Building techniques: Timber and block with corrugated roofing suited to heavy rainfall; German colonial masonry at Buea; drainage engineering on steep volcanic ground.
Village layout: Village strung along a contour road with farms above and plantation boundaries below, a spatial statement of the whole grievance.
Artifacts
Buea German colonial buildings
Heritage site
The Schloss and administrative buildings of the German colonial capital.
Male society masks
Performance
Masked figures of the men's society at funerals and celebrations.
Mount Cameroon
Natural heritage
Africa's most active volcano, home of Efasa Moto.
Bakweri Land Claims Committee archive
Archive
A century of documentation on the plantation claim.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1880
Bakweri communities farm the volcanic slopes of Mount Cameroon.
1884–1916
German colonisation; the slopes are expropriated for plantations and Buea becomes the colonial capital.
1947
The plantations pass to the Cameroon Development Corporation as a state body.
1960s–present
The Bakweri Land Claims Committee pursues restitution, including at the African Commission.
2016–present
The Anglophone crisis engulfs the South-West region, displacing hundreds of thousands.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Britannica: Cameroon — peopleEncyclopaedia Britannica
- African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights — communicationsAfrican Union
Premium & scholarly sources