Gulliver's Travels - 01/06/2025

​Cameroon  Part 1  November-December 2024

Dale Sievert / AKA Gulliver

  Cameroon is in "deepest, darkest Africa," just above the equator on the Atlantic coast.  It is three times the size of Wisconsin with six times the population.  As it was once a colony of France, French is spoken by 56 percent of the population, along with 68 other languages.  

   Paul Biya is the president, but he has been that since 1982 and refuses to leave, so he is actually a dictator.  Corruption is a serious matter, and I noticed that at the many police checkpoints our tour group of three encountered, perhaps 30 of them.  At eleven of them, our driver had to pay off the police.  I never did that in Wisconsin.

   My primary reason for visiting Cameroon was to visit two reserves where lowland gorillas and chimpanzees live.  Very unfortunately, both were closed to us because of either breakouts that occured or of many newborn animals that the managers did not want to be affected by tourists.  I also wanted to visit three different kingdoms of indigenous people, plus the Ba'Aka, the ethnic group also known as Pygmies.  All were highly interesting.
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   The weather near the Atlantic was sultry, but inland it was very pleasant.   A big plus of the trip was that I saw tons of young people, something I could not have said if I visited Florida or Arizona.  Thus, I did not "catch" old age, always a fear of mine.  I also fear dying of boredom, and I certainly avoided that in Cameroon.

What I called "walking stores" are ubiquitous in Cameroon.

Fruit sellers are the most common.

I love free markets, and here it is seen in action with lots of competitive sellers.

This person has a really heavy load to bear.

I couldn't figure out what these five guys were staring at.

Get the pot ready!

I really liked the "head advertisement" of the shoe salesmen.

Ekom Falls, 262 feet high

Fisherman in his pirogue

Watch your step or you'll have ants in your pants.

Palace of the king of the Bamileke

The palace of the sultan of the Bamoun people

In a village of the Bororo people

The chief's palace in Batoffam

Making adobe-type building blocks

A heavy load of plantains, a relative of bananas

Nests of swifts under a bridge

A placid river

A waterfall that empties directly into the Atlantic Ocean

A new planting of cassava or manioc trees, the source of tapioca, obtained by grinding the roots into a mash

This woman had a long walk to haul her plantains

In a small remote fishing village, this woman was digging out the meat of shellfish.

Driving cattle to the slaughterhouse

Hand-made pirogues are very commonly used by many on the rivers of Cameroon.

Two-man teams haul sand by diving to the river bottom with 5-gallon buckets.

With a taller Bantu tribe man and two Pygmies

A typical Pygmy family hut

Pygmies make these drums and adjust them with pegs to alter the pitch

The Pygmies "fish" by building two dams, then empty the water between them to expose the fish.

This is the "Spirit of the Forest," a man in a costume made of palm leaves.

Epilogue

   Cameroon is perhaps the poorest country I ever visited, especially the area of the Pygmy tribe where I spent two days.  As I've done before when visiting poor areas, I try to determine how happy the people are.  Of course, there is no way to actually measure that, so I use "proxy variables" that might mirror happiness: how often people smile, laugh, enjoy daily activities, etc. 

The living standards of Americans, that is, the level of goods and services available to us, on average, is vastly higher than that of the Cameroon people.  If people anywhere buy "stuff" to somehow better their lives, and to make them happier, then one could logically expect Americans to smile more, laugh more, and enjoy life more than those in Cameroon...or more than Americans did when we were kids.  A LOT more, as we have a LOT more stuff. 

But, I did NOT see a vast difference in how the Pygmy people acted compared with Americans.  So, being an economist, I can't help thinking that all this enormous advance in living standards since the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s hasn't really done us much good, that is, made us much happier...or at least vastly less than one would expect.  It's like some car buff that replaces his engine with a much more powerful one to go much faster...but only allows him to go from 120 to 125 MPH.