Kome did not say much about Koto prior to this trip. So, I was on an expedition into unknown territory.
He talked about wood, certain I would get roofing wood in Koto, even the “small leaf ” species. I did not believe him, cautious not to be hooked into deceit. Sometimes wood brokers gave spurious leads for selfish interests. Later I confirmed his information. We sourced wood in Koto but I did not lose sight of happenstances in the community, some of the memories which lingered for a while.
Koto was an agrarian community, located east of Mbanga, in Mongo Division of Littoral Region. It was about 30km to the commercial city of Douala and bordered the Southwest Region at the Pendaboko axis. It sprawled in unspecified land mass, more of farm lands and forest. The population, though officially unknown in figures, was sizeable enough for an autonomous community, and its status predated the existence of its Balong natives.
It shared chunks of Mount Cameroon – Kupemanuguba wetland forest reserve, standing out as food basket to adjoining towns and cities, with fertile clay and humus soil, evinced by massive crop production. It provided revenue to the local council authority through levies on farm produce and tolls on transportation of produce, yet Koto groaned under the weight of abandonment, devoid of absolute government presence.
The existing social infrastructure was inadequate. The lone primary school was dilapidated; and there was only a sole secondary school for the growing adolescent and youth population, which was attached to the Assemblies of God Seminary, and which many villagers could not afford. Electricity, proper sanitation, good water, and health care seemed to be luxuries the locals had not enjoyed for a long time—and this gave the village a ghetto image. Political rhetoric and mellifluous promises were all that the villagers got from politicians during their election campaigns, all of which came to nothing.
¶
Kome and I set out to Koto from Limbe. We arrived at Kombe market, known also as Pendaboko junction, after about an hour.
“Thank God, we are finally here,” Kome said, and quickly jumped out of the bus.
Pendaboko junction was a typical motor park. Cabs and buses moved in and out. Loud music echoed from bars. Petty traders hawked around for their daily bread; motor-park touts raced at the sight of passengers, shouting destinations. Farm produce were on display, buyers haggled over prices with sellers. Lorries and vans carried goods in heaps, their loaders at their arduous task, dripping sweat as if drenched by rain. Drivers negotiated with local council agents for motor park tickets. Petty thieves and pick-pockets were busy, taking the easy way out.
“Pa, una di go?” a voice shouted in Pidgin English, as Kome and I approached a motor-park.
“Koto-Up, Koto-Eshimbi, Pendaboko camp, Corner wata,” others voiced.
“It’s the lone means of transport here,” Kome said.
He beckoned to a bike rider. Three rushed towards us, splashing mud.
“Na onli one bike I need…we di go Koto,” Kome told them.
I objected, insisting to ride alone. Not for indignation. I couldn’t risk riding “double” on a bumpy earth road, more so without helmet. Kome obliged. I warned the bike rider to go easy. He smiled.
We rode through the wide dirt road ahead of us, and stopped at the village square, also known as Banana Junction. It could have been a less than twenty minutes ride, if not for road bumps. Rowdiness around the village square creep me out. Shouts and chatters from small bars, creaking sounds of over loaded rickety vehicles transporting farm produce, blaring horns of motorbikes speeding as if in racing competition. People loitered about.
The elderly appeared sprightly for their age, young men sagged jeans trousers, exposing boxer shorts. Young women walked in bouncing steps, buttocks wiggling as if automated. Houses were along the road in no particular order, more of huts and shanties. Only handfuls were built with cement blocks and zinc.
Small bars and food vendors littered in make-shift shacks. Local drinks like afoofo, quasha, and palm wine were sold; same as local delicacies—fufu and eru, corn-chaf and koki-corn. Some locals devoured large portions of food as if celebrating their last day on earth; others came with bowls for takeaways. A mud house served as film hall.
Plywood nailed on one side registered titles of movies for the day, more of Nollywood home videos.
“Sir, welcome to Koto,” Kome teased. He knew I wasn’t at ease. I smiled.
“Is this the place?”
“Ah! no. It’s big, extending to Eshimbi quarter,” he said, pointing at a different direction. Ignoring his remarks, I asked him to check the suppliers. It was about noon. He wanted to eat before going to look for them. “My intestines have started grumbling,” he quipped.
¶
Kome left. I went into one of the shanties to wait for him. The shanty was airy, quite helpful for the surging heat gradually taking toll on me. I met a tall young man, dressed in faded jeans and T-shirt, his fingers cracking melon seeds.
“Welcome sir” he said a third time, bowing his head. He dusted a plastic chair by his side and motioned me to sit.
“Thank you…this place is damn hot,” I said.
“That’s the peculiarity of Koto…the dry season is worst,” he responded.
He slapped his legs intermittently with his palm, scratching spots bitten by mosquitoes. Medicines in sealed plastic cups and small packets filled a medium-sized leather box beside him. The box was kept open on a table; medicines exposed to fluctuating temperature and dust. Some had blurred expiry dates, made in India, Pakistan or Nigeria—medicines for common tropical illnesses.
The young man looked unkempt in his overgrown hair and beard, which he also scratched often, not mindful of dirt on his nails as he attended to those who came to buy what they called “tablets” from the man they also called “Docteur.” He asked questions, made prescriptions, and sold his tablet in one swoop, thereafter continued cracking his melon seeds.
“As-e-e-e Docteur, adi cam see yu smau tam, ma skin no dey fine,” said a passerby on bicycle.
“Ti I see you,” Docteur responded.
“Ma mami say make yu gi ei dat same medcine yestiday,” a little girl said, stretching her hand to give money.
Docteur collected the 300 francs coins, hissed and dropped it in a small plastic cup.
“Te ya mami a jus gi ei dis medcine. Dis moni no coret.”
“Okee,” the girl said and ran off.
Another woman came shivering. “A beg Docteur gi mi somtin quik, quik. A jus comot farm.”
Weeeh! Jus wait, I go mix coret one fur you.” Docteur got busy opening plastic cups and removing pills.
I remarked about his ‘Docteur’ appellation.
“My name is Ngobina; original Bali boy from North west Region,” he said, spouting platitudes about his tribe. I sneered at his many words, no less from the bickering by a small group of men and women at an adjacent bar. They were drinking a mixture of palm wine and afofo – mouths churning out saliva, cups in hand. No tables, so they sipped and kept their cups on the floor. Some were already inebriated.
A middle-aged woman owned the bar. She sat near a big table, where she displayed bottles of afoofo and palm wine. She interacted with her customers in French and Pidgin English, refilled emptied bottles, rinsed used cups, collected money and gave change. She quibbled with two customers because of change. They hadn’t told her they had 2000 francs note for palm wine of 450 francs.
A lady in the bar asked, “Docteur, na ya broda be dat?”
“Hawu eim dey leke say e comot na watman contri.”
Laughter erupted from the bar. I smiled.
“I kno say fur dis Koto, una no wan take eye see fine man…akwara dem all,” Docteur quipped.
I thought his response was offensive. But the lady laughed. Others laughed as well.
Their frivolous arguments amused me.
“Etoo na richest fuboler fur dis wurd” a voice said.
“Na lies. Dat one na bifor. Naow so, na poor man” another voice countered.
“Eim fubol sef don die finish.”
Then a young man came to see Docteur, limping. He wanted some tablets.
“Ha fur ya wund,” Docteur asked.
“Massa, dat ma pain kiler tablets don finish,” the young man responded and sat on a small bamboo bench.
“Ya las tetanus ijektion na tomoro. A go dres ya wund too,” Docteur said and gave him tablets.
“A beg bring moni tomoro, ya bill don plenti.”
“I don hear,” the young man responded, struggling to stand. I held his hand to get up, touched by the way his face contorted in pains.
“Look at him, suffering in pains. Your ear could have been chopped off,” Docteur scoffed, as the young man left.
“Na palava woman go kill una fur dis Koto.”
“He had an accident? I asked.
“Accident could have been honourable than an attack for flirting with his neighbour’s wife, after several warnings.” Docteur said.
His attacker inflicted serious injuries on him: fractured limb, bleeding ear and bruised cheeks—indicative of the frequent violent altercations in Koto triggered by adulterous escapades and foolish bets over women or men. The young man lodged a complaint against his attacker to the traditional council, for an issue that was, at best, an assault at the police station. Docteur told me his complaint would end like other serious cases of adultery and promiscuity downplayed by the traditional council. A situation he said had festered sexual immorality in the village, more like a repulsive circle of depravity. Flirting was rampant, unwanted pregnancy was common, coerced cohabitation popular, sometimes with family consent.
¶
Kome returned hours later without the wood suppliers. “They will be available late evening,” he said.
It became obvious that we would spend a night in Koto.
“Don’t bother about me, I will stay with a friend at Eshimbi quarter,” Kome stated. He took me to Farmer’s Bar—one of the few decent spots in Koto. The bar section was spatial, and also served as a dancing hall. Its rooms were slightly bigger than cubicles, without proper ventilation or fan. A generator powered the bar and rooms between 7pm till about midnight. Water sourced from a well, was left in small buckets for mud particles to settle. The same water was used for bathing and to flush the WC toilet.
Bed was small, perhaps made according to the size of the room, with a squeaking sound at each turn I made. Mattress so thin, I felt body pains as if I slept on bare wood. Buzz of mosquitoes, nerve wrecking noise from the bar’s loud music and menacing heat worsened my night sleep.
In the morning, I stepped out of my room to some quiet. It was Monday. Main Street, also known as Pendaboko road, was deserted. Many villagers had gone to the market—more sellers than buyers, idlers not left out. Dawn in Koto was same every other day except on market days. The community sets out by 4 am. Food crops evacuated from farms and storage barns on weekend were transported to the market.
Market day was like festive holiday. Eating and drinking began from multiple beer parlours around the market, with a wrap at Farmers’ bar in the evening. More drinking, bits of womanizing and dancing—as makossa, zaiko and afrobeats were played in turns.
On this day, villagers had time to relax, given that they continued their labour and hard work in the farms thereafter. Farming was the mainstay of their activities. Few were into commercial motorbike riding, owned small grocery shops and kiosks, but not without subsistence farming. Their depleting forest had been helpful. They harvested eru (also known as Prunus Africana) in large quantities. Different species of wood were sawn and supplied by those able to connect to willing buyers.
¶
Kome and the suppliers met me at Farmer’s Bar before noon. We discussed at length. I was not impressed with their greed. They spoke in manners which heightened my suspicion, more so as Docteur had already hinted me about scam stories of wood suppliers in Koto. They harped on advance payment with no clarity on timeline. I felt it was inauspicious to engage them. Kome also expressed such concern. He suggested we get workers from Limbe. Stressful, but it saved us enormous anxiety and cost.
Work started a week later—the sawing, evacuation and offloading of wood at our project site—the new handicap center in Mile 14, Buea. Our wood operation eventually lasted about eight months. I shuttled Koto within this period, often spent days and weeks in the community.
I was elated work had started, though the euphoria ended as long as workers carried themselves about with the audacity of recalcitrant experts. They snuggled in the obscene life in Koto, spending time and money on women and drinks. They lost concentration, which almost jeopardized our operations.
Dave and Bonaventure were brought in to beef up our workforce. Of course I had asked Kome to get immediate replacement. Both of them lived in Koto.
“My friend told me in confidence that Dave is a very good chainsaw operator,” Kome said.
I engaged them. Loading of wood resumed. I was happy again. Dave’s patience and attitude to work impressed me but he could not continue. His wife had postpartum complications following a stillbirth delivery, which gradually affected her mental stability. He came under intense pressures from his in-laws to bring her to the village for traditional belle treatment.
“How long are you staying? I asked Dave.
“I can’t say exactly sir. I’m taking my children along.” he continued to plead. “If not for the recklessness of the nurses, I could have been talking of birth celebration now and not this abrupt journey,” he snarled.
They had been expecting a male child after his wife’s three female births. Unfortunately the baby boy couldn’t make it alive. Nurses on duty did their best. No doctor was available, no decent maternity. What served as maternity could have been a shanty, partitioned into three—one used for consultation and materials, another as delivery room, the other as ward with few outdated iron beds. The maternity operated as a community based organization, as rightly indicated on the sign board. I was so irritated I never bothered to inquire about the qualification of the proprietor.
¶
Stories abound in the village of women with experiences similar to Dave’s wife. Child and maternal mortality were on the rise. Villagers had no option. The so-called maternity was the only thing available. Sometimes the proprietor and staff played the ostrich, while women groveled in gratitude. Few could afford going out of the village for maternity and reproductive healthcare. CDC and Presbyterian clinics were about ten and thirteen kilometres away respectively. It was risky for pregnant women in pains of contraction to brace these distances riding on motorbike.
“Grandéfre, na normal thin for dis side o,” Docteur said when I told him about Dave’s issue. His “tablet” trading spot at the village square became a regular place for me. Sometimes we chatted over drinks. He was gregarious.
“Things have really slowed down in our operation since Dave left.”
“Oh! Sorry sir,” Docteur responded, and ran off to his house to get kerosene lantern. His rechargeable lamp had dimmed. He wanted the lantern handy.
“If this one go off, I no go get wahala,” he stated, still puffing and huffing from racing to and from his house. Three people were already waiting to buy tablet. He attended to them quickly.
Villagers trusted him and his prescriptions. They got well from their illness. Except a colleague of his who was hardly stable, another pathetic sign of health facility in the community was a dispensary functioning at the whims of the owner. A single room, partitioned with plywood. One part used as office, the other with a bed, for emergency situations. The owner and two nurses alternated duties in the dispensary, which he set up as a branch of his small clinic at Mbanga. They lived outside the village and sometimes the dispensary remained closed for days.
For any serious medical case in the village, the patient either traveled long distances of about 18 kilometres to hospitals or resorted to unorthodox means.
Docteur often fantasized as the only helper of the locals. Perhaps he remained in the village because his services are needed and his trade lucrative. Otherwise, I wondered what could have been his drive and intent to leave his family in Douala and live in Koto for more than ten years. He visited Douala frequently, more on weekends, just to replenish his goods and see his family.
“I studied in Nigeria,” he claimed.
“And you returned immediately after studies?”
“No. I moved from there to Malabo. My sojourn in Malabo lasted 4 years.”
I smiled. His claim could have been plausible if he was exact on his field of study and duration. His thought flow and mannerisms debunked him even more. His incoherence and consistent poor grammar was nauseating. He was flippant; often divulging health conditions his patients shared with him, more so concerning sexually transmittable diseases. He embarrassed his debtors with a tongue-lashing or made them an object of his talkativeness.
“Haa, I no di play wit ma five franc, no way,” he said.
I told him somebody owed me 800.000 francs and ran away.
“Ma mami,” he exclaimed. “Dat one so, a di go ma village go fini witam.”
Sometimes he spoke lofty about God as if he just realized He existed, but I was certain he was more of a traditionalist at heart. I was also certain he was not medical savvy, not even as an apprentice chemist. Perhaps he gained experience by practicing his trade over time. He was shrewd. He sold his “tablets” at cut-throat prices and was very reluctant to refund money when expiry dates were discovered.
“Una no kno say mi too a bayam na bayam,” he argued.
Some villagers complained about his high prices, though they had no choice. They took advantage of his benevolence of selling “tablets” to them on credit and also being handy. They could reach him at any time of the day when the need arose.
Docteur must have attained high school unlike many of his peers in Koto who were school dropped-outs. Some did not attempt school at all. Others had varying apprenticeships, with potentials to succeed in the city. They also settled in Koto and like miscreants, striving in all sort of vices: in gross profanity, petty theft and rapes, merchandizing and smoking marijuana.
¶
Kome’s dereliction of duty got me into trouble with Koto Traditional Council. He misappropriated money disbursed for “settlement”—a sort of compulsory charge or payment for wood operation within the community. I was chagrined when the Council summoned me. They were harsh, and accused us of manipulation. My pragmatism paid off. I got them on the side of understanding and we settled.
The Traditional Council was composed of the elderly, the middle-aged, and young men, but no women. Non-natives outnumbered the natives. Balongs are indigenes. Few of them lived in the village or established presence there. They preferred cities and towns to their own native land, like the traditional ruler who also lived in Mbanga town. He ruled by proxy, not necessarily because of his job as Gendarmerie Officer. Accusations by many villagers against his council members and his nonchalance deepened the rift between him and his subjects. Council members were accused of skewed justice, cash inducements, intimidations and extortions.
“Those are unreasonable aspersions,” Pa Agbor said. He was Chairman of the traditional council, and a non native from Manyu Division of South west Region.
“Haven’t they also accused me of being malleable and subservient as Chairman?”
“Yet I’m not always in terms with the Chief ’s proxy.”
Pa Agbor was among first generation non-natives who had become an integral part of Koto. As early settlers, they came as migrant farmers, jobbers and caretakers for farmlands owned by elites and the well-offs. They were of different tribes—the Ewondos, Bamilekes, more of Bayangis and Eshimbis. Many had died but their second and third generations still lived in Koto.
“Mama had me and my siblings here,” Pa Agbor said.
“In those days, Koto was a farming hamlet: thick bush, foot paths and few huts, all around here,” he gesticulated.
His stories seemed to refer to a community besieged by a Luciferan force. It used to be known as coven for white witches, believably so because of unusual diabolic maneuvers and frights. Strange voices and enchantments were often heard at obscure corners in wee hours of the night. Nobody dared get close. Those maneuvers suddenly ceased when Assemblies of God Church sited their seminary in Koto, preceding other Pentecostal denominations.
“That’s when we started having respite even from mysterious deaths,” Pa Agbor said smiling.
“Things are different now.”
*Photo by Shashi Yadav on Unsplash