Acorn

Issue date: 2/1/08 Section: Arts and Leisure

Media Credit: Liz Bowers A young boy peddles his bike along a dusty, unpaved road in a small African village in Cameroon.

Dawn breaks with the greetings of local roosters throughout the village. In a sporadic spree they chime throughout the morning, effectively ending any attempt to sleep late. Miss Catherine's 19-year-old daughter is waiting at the front door with buckets of food and a kettle of water. The house in the small Cameroonian village of Ossing has no running water, so she carries it from the local tap to prepare our breakfast and tea. Her garments are traditional. The flowing cloth adorns her skin with a variety of colors and shapes. The key to fashion in Cameroon is that any form of natural air conditioning is desirable, to say the least.

Most of the other villagers have already headed off to the farms, I am told as she rushes past me to the kitchen. It's time to get ready for our big day. We tour this dusty village, far from the paved streets and running water of Mamfe. Ossing lies about 10 miles from town, but with the impassable dust roads, the trip takes nearly an hour to complete. Mamfe is an oasis because the paved roads pertain only to the immediate town and all roads leading out are little more than dust and rocks. Villagers tell us that when the rainy season comes they are almost completely trapped because the roads are so flooded and washed out that any escape would take the lion's share of a day to complete. Why bother to trek from Ossing to Mamfe when there is no escape from there?

We're dressed and seated at the table for our breakfast. It's amazing that no matter how far away from home you may be, there is always a taste of familiarity. Breakfast for us consists of omelets and bread with a hot cup of tea. The omelets contain no cheese but a mixture of peppers and onions grown on local farms. It's amazing that everything we eat in Ossing is grown literally in the backyards of its inhabitants.

Our host mother, Miss Catherine, arrives at the house and soon we are whisked out the front door to awaiting motorbikes. The farms are a few miles away, but the roads are so dusty she refuses to let us walk. Passing cars and timber trucks-heading back from the rain forest-kick up a furious dust storm that makes sight near impossible and breathing less than agreeable. To protect her two pale children, she'll hire two taxi bikes for the day.

Continued...

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