Bulu

Population: Estimated 900,000 to 1.2 million

Location: The South region of Cameroon around Ebolowa, Sangmélima and Kribi's hinterland

Language: Bulu, a Beti-Fang language

Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (A74, Beti-Fang)

Traditional governance: Lineage and clan authority without centralised chiefship historically; Cameroonian regional and divisional administration, with chiefs of first, second and third degree appointed by the state.

Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.

Clothing: Contemporary dress; barkcloth and raffia in the older record; the mvet player's ornament and the dance regalia of the ozila and other performances.

Food: Cassava and plantain, groundnut sauces, forest game, river fish, palm oil, the ndolé and okok leaf dishes of the south, and palm wine.

Ceremonies: Funerals with mvet recitation and dance over several nights; the so initiation, now much reduced; ancestral offerings; harvest and hunting rites.

Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous; bridewealth in goods and cash; the negotiation is staged and involves both lineages at length.

Initiation rites: The so, a graded ordeal and instruction for boys, once general and now largely ended; Christian confirmation and schooling have replaced it as the significant passage.

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.

“The mvet does not tell a lie; it tells a longer truth.”

On epic narrative.

“The cocoa tree feeds the man who planted it and the son who did not.”

On inheritance and patience.

“The forest gives a road to whoever cuts it.”

On effort, and on concessions.

Creation: Zambe as the high god of the Beti-Fang world; ancestral spirits, historically kept as skulls in reliquary boxes; forest powers with prohibitions.

Beliefs: The byeri ancestral reliquary cult, largely destroyed by missions; the so initiation; Presbyterian and Catholic Christianity dominant since the early twentieth century; healing and divination continuing beneath.

Ancestors: Ancestral skulls in byeri boxes were the lineage's charter; mission campaigns destroyed most of them, and the carved guardians entered European collections.

Traditional settlements: Villages of rectangular houses in two lines along a road cut through the forest, with the aba men's meeting house at the centre.

Building techniques: Pole and mud with raffia mat or thatch roofing, now brick and iron sheet; the aba built open-sided for assembly; mvet and drum making; byeri guardian carving historically.

Village layout: Two lines of houses facing each other across the road with the aba in the middle, cocoa and food gardens behind, and the forest beyond.

1. 1700s–1800s

   Beti-Fang migration southward brings Bulu communities into Cameroon's southern forest.

2. 1890s–1916

   German administration; Presbyterian missions establish at Ebolowa and adopt Bulu as their language; cocoa is introduced.

3. 1920s–1950s

   French administration; cocoa smallholding expands; mission schooling produces a southern educated class.

4. 1960–1982

   Ahmadou Ahidjo governs an independent Cameroon; the south's cocoa economy peaks.

5. 1980s–present

   Cocoa prices collapse; Kribi's deepwater port, the Chad-Cameroon pipeline and iron and timber concessions reshape the south.