Bertoua

The country around Bertoua is the homeland of the Gbaya, who moved into the region from the north-east over the 18th and 19th centuries, along with the Kaka, Maka and other forest peoples, while Baka hunter-gatherer communities lived in the deeper forest. Long-distance trade in ivory, kola and slaves passed through, and the area lay at the meeting point of savanna and rainforest influences rather than under any single large state.

German Kamerun reached these forests late, and the administration set up posts to control the trade routes and impose taxes; the town grew from one such post on the high ground beside the road. Under French rule after the First World War it became a local administrative centre, with a mission, a school and a hospital, in a region that the colonial economy valued above all for rubber, timber and forced labour.

Independence in 1960 and later administrative reform made Bertoua the capital of the East Region, Cameroon's largest region by area and its emptiest. Timber concessions, the railway at Bélabo, the roads pushed south towards Yokadouma and east to the Central African Republic border, and mining in the region shaped its growth. Since the 2000s two things have changed it again: conflict across the border, which brought tens of thousands of refugees into the region, and the building of the Lom Pangar dam on the Lom river, which drew workers, traffic and money to the area.

Gbaya is the language most heard in the villages around the town, alongside Kaka, Maka and Pol, with French as the common tongue of the town itself and Fulfulde in the trading quarter. The East is the most ethnically mixed part of southern Cameroon, with families from the west and north settled here for work in timber, mining and administration, and the presence of refugees from across the border has added further communities.

The region is best known outside Cameroon for the Baka, forest hunter-gatherer communities whose music, and above all their polyphonic singing, has been recorded and studied widely. Baka families live along the forest roads south and east of Bertoua, and their relationship with settled farmers, logging companies and the protected forests is a live and difficult subject; visits are best arranged through organisations that work with the communities themselves.

Town life is Christian and Muslim together, with Catholic and Presbyterian churches and a mosque serving the northern and Hausa traders. Funerals, as elsewhere in Cameroon, are major weekend events, and the dry-season months bring weddings and family returns. Football is followed closely, and the local market is as much a social meeting point as a place of trade.

The 2005 census counted about 95,000 people in Bertoua's two communes, and the town, the largest in a region of forest, small settlements and very long roads, has grown quickly since. Government is the biggest employer — the regional services, the schools, the hospital — followed by transport, trade, timber and mining. International aid organisations have a strong presence because of the refugee camps and settlements in the region.

The day starts before sunrise with motorbike taxis, market deliveries and the coaches leaving for Yaoundé. The market is busiest in the morning, offices work through to the afternoon with a long lunch, and the evening belongs to the street grills and bars. Lorries loaded with logs pass through at all hours, bound for the sawmills and the rail terminal at Bélabo.

The town's problems are those of a remote regional capital: unreliable power and water, roads that deteriorate in the rains, few jobs for young people and a hospital serving an enormous area. It has grown quickly with arrivals from the countryside, from other regions and from across the border, which has stretched housing, schools and services.

The everyday cooking here is forest food. Okok, the shredded leaves of the Gnetum vine simmered with ground peanuts and palm oil, and kpem, pounded cassava leaves cooked with palm nut, are eaten with cassava, cocoyam or plantain. Bâton de manioc, fermented cassava steamed in leaves, is the usual accompaniment, and groundnut sauces thickened with egusi seeds are common.

Fish comes from the Lom, the Kadey and the Sanaga, smoked in the villages and sold in bundles at the market or grilled whole over charcoal with pepper sauce. Poulet DG — chicken with fried plantain and vegetables — is the standard restaurant meal, and soya, spiced beef skewers grilled over wood, is the evening street snack, sold alongside roast maize and plantain.

The forest supplies seasonal foods that turn up in the market and rarely anywhere else: wild mango kernels ground to thicken soups, njansang seeds, safou, honey gathered in the forest and a range of leaves and tubers. Palm wine is tapped in the villages and drunk fresh, and bottled beer is the drink of the town's bars, where meat is grilled outside in the evening.