Cameroon: Njen

Towards the end of my stay in Bamenda, I went for an overnight trip to Njen, a village to the west of Bamenda, close to the border with the south-west province. I went with Nabil, with whom I had been hanging out for some of the activities in Bamenda.

As David was leaving for an NSA meeting, he quickly scribbled some instructions for how to get to Njen:

Basically, we had to first get to Guzang, a town on the way, and then find “any available transportation” to Njen. We had the phone number for Felix, one of the Bahá’ís in Njen, and also a name in case we got stuck in Guzang.

So we set out on Tuesday morning (12 May), catching a taxi to the Hospital section of Bamenda then looking for transport to Guzang. We found a car, a small hatchback, which we entered – along with 6 other people, 4 in front and 4 in the back – an extremely tight fit.

The road to Guzang was quite pleasant, with lots of greenery and mountaineous regions in the background. Once we got to Guzang, we asked one of the shopkeepers about getting to Njen – he helped us find the right transport, and we thanked him and gave him a Bahá’í pamphlet. When we were heading back to Bamenda we ran into him again and invited him to visit the Bahá’í centre in Bamenda whenever he was in town.

The right transport to Njen, we found out, was a motorbike. And we both got on, the driver, me, then Nabil. Luckily for us, this driver was a pro – he knew the roads like the back of his hand, and we felt quite safe with him. We later found out that he was either from Njen himself, or spent a lot of time there.

The road to Njen, from the moment we left Guzang was untarred. For the first third of the way, it was pretty flat and even, with the usual small bumps and shallow mud puddles. However, we soon saw why the only available transport was with motorbikes – cars could never take this road and survive. It became a steeper downward incline, lots of bends, and the road surface was completely uneven with large rocks and big grooves in the mud. Apparently the road had been cleared a long time ago (of bushes), but they never got around to flattening it. Here’s a video clip of the road, as we were heading down – the steepness of the incline is not apparent:

And a photo of the road, for full effect:

The whole trip from Bamenda took maybe a couple of hours, so we got there before noon. We realized that we had arrived on their “market day”. The way life in the villages around these parts is organized, is to have 7 days of working in the fields then the 8th day is a market day, where everyone brings harvest to a common area in the village and they trade, and where passers by can come to buy. Market day is also the one day when they get to turn on their electricity generator. They use this power to, charge their cellphones, cut hair (using an electric shaver), and of course blast music in the pub for dancing.

We went to the pub when we arrived, and someone managed to get in contact with Felix. Apparently they had been told we would arrive on Monday, and were expecting us, but we never showed up. So Felix had assumed it meant the next monday and gone off to Guzang for the day. He said he would make it back soon, and to wait for him there. We ended up staying in the pub, watching some of the locals drink and dance, till evening. A few people greeted us as they came in, saying they were Bahá’í and one of them even greeted us with Alláh’u’abhá, then proceeded to go in and participate in the activities. We got offered two rounds of Top (an orange soda drink like Fanta) by two different people who befriended us. We also got quite hungry as we hadn’t had any lunch, and spoke fondly of having garri and sugar (also referred to as bachelor’s food).

Around 6pm, when it was starting to get dark, we heard word that Felix was almost back. Then we suddenly heard that there had been an accident, then we heard some details – there was a guy on a motorbike who had slammed into a car (the car had no brake lights and had suddenly braked), this guy was apparently Felix’s brother. We also heard that he had injured his legs… no, he had fractured them… then, another revision, the legs had been completely severed! We also heard that Felix had gone to check up on him.

At this point we were thinking, if his legs were severed he probably wouldn’t make it, and either way if it is Felix’s brother he would have to go and take care of him, accompany him to the hospital, etc. and we didn’t know anyone else here so maybe we should start thinking about heading back. We were assured that there was no need to be hasty, and that Felix will no doubt return soon.

Finally at around 7pm we caught sight of Felix, learnt that the accident hadn’t been that serious (apparently some sort of leg fracture), then started heading to Felix’s home. This in itself was another 15-30min walk, it was dark now and the road quite slippery. We had more than a few close calls slipping, but managed to avoid a complete fall. We arrived at Felix’s compound, with three houses in an arc, his in the middle. His wife was on a trip and so he didn’t have food, but one of his in-laws sent some over – baked bananas (unripe) with fish stew – very delicious. I unconciously started to tarof, but was informed that it is very rude to refuse food. The stew was particularly delicious.

Felix told us a little about the history of the Faith in Njen – apparently they have had Bahá’ís there for more than 25 years, at one point numbering over 30. The chief is also a Bahá’í, and we got to meet him the next day. Felix is a merchant – he travels all over Cameroon selling cola-nuts mainly, he is sometimes away for months at a time. This makes it hard for him to have regular activities, though he did run some children classes recently. He has also been the delegate for his area to the National Convention for 15 years running – he showed us pictures of this years’ convention and shared stories. He commented about how he seemed to be getting out of touch with the new activities of the plan, and we took the opportunity to share with him, in some detail, the sequence of courses and how exciting they were, and how they were being pursued all over the world.

The next morning, we had a meeting with the chief. He was a very nice fellow, quite happy to see us, and quite convinced of his being a Bahá’í – he told us how over the years many times other churches would approach him and he kept insisting, “I am a Bahá’í!”. We also told him about the sequence of courses and he seemed happy at the prospect. We then had a meeting with the other Bahá’ís, some 7 or 8 showed up (the chief is on the far right):

We explained that we were here for a brief visit, to tell them about the current activities in the plan, and offered to organize for volunteers to come to visit them from Bamenda and go through the sequnce of courses with them. We were just here to tell them about it, and determine what time of the year was good for them (between the planting season and the harvest, ideally). Here are the notes Nabil took:

They also asked a couple of questions, which they said people had been asking them – why are there no priests or pastors in the Faith, and what’s up with the succession of authority from Bahá’u’lláh to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá – is it hereditory? We tried to answer them, and I believe Nabil gave a good response. I later learned that these were common questions and many people asked these questions:

We then decided to leave, but first went for a walk around, with Felix showing us their local school (where we bought big avocados and bunches of 8 bananas for 50F each (0.10c US$)). This proved providential as we saw a pickup truck passing by the road and with Felix’s help got seats on it. It took us all the way back to Bamenda for a good price. The drivers switched in Njen, and the new driver seemed to be well known as a runner among the local checkpoint police. They had no patience for him and force a good 500F out of him at every stop. It didn’t help that he had no papers at all with him. He ended up quite broke by the time we reached Bamenda and we had to find change at a local petrol station to pay him.

Some more photos of Njen – Cola-nut tree: