nigel barley wrote about this place

the first semi-scholarly thing i read about cameroon was called "the innocent anthropologist" by nigel barley. in his book, barley talks mostly about tooth aches, vivid descriptions of a dowayo village he spent two years in, loud nigerian music, and a surprisingly pleasant protestant mission in n'gauondéré cameroon.

after about ten weeks in cameroon, i am finally in a place that barley talked about. i ask everyone in the mission if they have heard of Barley, but so far there has been no luck. N'gaoundéré does indeed have an unfortunate ammount of loud nigerian music but it is also tree lined, clean, full of bikes, and the location of at least two awesome coffee shops. Not coffee shops with nescafe on the menu, but coffee shops with delicious hot strong coffee served in a vessel that everyone would agree is a mug.

this city is unlike any city ive ever been in. There are walls everywhere seperating people on the street from the compounds that everyone lives in. My home for example is a house only in the loosest of senses and is indeed behind a series of walls. To get there, you take a right at the tiled microfinance bank (every bank and every hotel ive seen in this country is covered with big porcelin tiles...strange?) and proceed EAST towards "la mosque centrale". (By the way, everywhere a white person goes outside of Yaounde will feature several sets of eyes connected to amazed, bored, interested, or what can only be described as "doubtful" faces waiting for a new thing to gaze upon...given their relative rarity, the white will find herself the target of many many of these eyes. In Yaounde, this can happen from time to time but the passive action of staring is generally brief and often quickly followed by the active vocalization of "haha blanch" (which is likely to lead to the white feeling confused, sweaty, and/or the wearer of dirty shoes) or "hey blanch", which results in the white remembering that, yes, she is white. Yaounde, in general, makes the white feel mostly anonymous, but when he is publicly pointed out...he will likely feel a bit silly. In other cities the passive stare is long and inexplicably significant. One feels as though someone should say something...but what? If the white opens his mouth to greet the appropriate silent onlooker, the white may recall that, usually, the white fails to see all of the eyes pointed at her. BOOM. This is when the surprise "bon soir blanch" makes its appearance from some other direction. The white spins about trying to find the source of the greeting, sees many eyes, says a sort of general "bon soir" to all onlookers and moves on. Its a bit awkward when this happens...its more like red than white at this point. I should be sure to say that in time, for this white anyway, the general feel of being watched becomes natural, even if its not obviously friendly. I will discuss this issue again later, but I would like to return to the description of my house again.) You know its to the east because this city is predominately influenced by Islam. I have already found myself on several occasions talking rather loudly with a comrade about such things as allergies, books, or perhaps my fear of mice at night when we both realize that we are in the midst of hundreds of people pointed east silently praying. as the cameroonian would say: AYE! Cameroon, I should say, is a very loud place. You get so used to it so quickly that walking into a completely silent environment can happen without you even noticing it. It seems strange, but even after only ten weeks something like that can become a "thing that doesnt happen" and therefore, I think, "a thing ive stopped noticing". Nonetheless, you can only go so far into a group of hundreds of silent people all facing the same direction without taking notice. (By the way, in both instances I stopped talking, and for a second stopped walking. then, when it was obvious that it was just prayer time, I continued walking quietly until I passed)

anyway, you head east up the road.

Then, between two buildings you will see what I would have guessed was just the tiny space that exists between any set of building set close to one another. no. it is another road (utilized by motos, walkers, horses, and I would assume, any tiny cars that may exist here) leading to another neighborhood. The entire length of the road is as narrow as the beginning, with multiple narrow offshoots headed of to god (allah for the laymens) knows where. This mystery exists, again, because there are walls everywhere...but in here there are at least doors, where looking in you can behold...walled hallways.

After a time, there is a door on the left. I remember it because unlike the other doors, in fact most doors, it doesnt have a wall around it. its just a door frame with a door entering in to a yard of sorts, filled with mud bricks (perhaps they will soon be the wall). I walk through the door to another door, and walk into a beatiful but simple courtyard. My house is perfect. three fourths is totally open to the sky. There is a kitchen area with a fire pit oven, a washing/bathroom room, and two bedrooms.

I am allowed to smoke there. and so i do.