Buea

The mountain's lower slopes are the homeland of the Bakweri, who farmed the volcanic soils in scattered villages long before Europeans arrived, and whose chief Kuv'a Likenye led a revolt against German rule in 1891. Buea grew from one of those villages into the seat of the German administration: the revolt was put down with the razing of Buea in 1894 and the death of Kuv'a Likenye, and in 1901 the governor Jesko von Puttkamer moved the capital of Kamerun up from the fever-ridden coast to the cooler mountainside, where it stayed until German rule ended in the First World War. Heavy stone and timber buildings of those years, including the governor's palatial residence, still stand among the gardens of the upper town, and plantations of cocoa, rubber and later tea were laid out on the slopes around them.

After the First World War the territory passed to Britain, which governed the Southern Cameroons as part of Nigeria and kept Buea as its headquarters. When Southern Cameroons voted in 1961 to join newly independent Cameroon, Buea became the capital of the federated state of West Cameroon until the federation was abolished in 1972, after which it settled into the role of regional capital of the Southwest.

The town grew quickly in the 1990s around its new university. Grievances over the marginalisation of English-language law and schooling produced lawyers' and teachers' protests in 2016, and from 2017 an armed separatist conflict has been fought across the Northwest and Southwest regions, with Buea, as the regional capital and a garrison town, at its centre.

Buea is an Anglophone town, and the distinction matters here more than almost anywhere in Cameroon: schooling follows the English-language system, the courts use common law, and Cameroonian Pidgin English is the language of markets, taxis and student bars, with English for formal business and Mokpwe, the Bakweri language, still spoken at home by many families.

Bakweri institutions remain visible. Villages keep their chiefs and their council houses, and Bakweri society keeps its own associations and dances, among them the Liengu and the Maalé elephant dance, while the mountain above the town holds a place of its own in local belief. Churches — Presbyterian, Baptist and Catholic, all with roots in 19th-century missions — anchor social life, and choirs, funerals and weddings fill the weekends.

The university has given the town a second, younger culture of debate, music and comedy, and its students come from across the English-speaking regions. Football is followed with the same intensity as everywhere in Cameroon. The best-known local event is the Race of Hope, run up and down the volcano in January or February, for which the town fills with athletes, chiefs and spectators. The conflict has cut across all of this: ceremonies, school terms and market days have repeatedly been disrupted by lockdowns and curfews.

The town itself has some 47,000 residents, while about 300,000 people live in Buea together with the ring of villages around it, from Mile 17 and Muea to Tole and Bokwaongo. Numbers have risen with students and with families displaced from the surrounding countryside by the conflict.

The town lives on administration, the university and agriculture. As the regional capital it holds the governor's office and the region's public services; the university and its attendant hostels, printers and eating houses dominate Molyko; and the slopes around the town grow plantain, cocoyam, vegetables and tea, with the Cameroon Development Corporation's plantations and the tea estate at Tole, a few kilometres from Buea Town and planted by the British in 1928, among the largest employers. Douala's port and markets, close enough for a day trip in normal times, absorb much of what the farms produce.

Days begin early and cool, with mist on the upper slopes; taxis and motorcycle taxis run the main road; markets are busiest in the morning. Since 2017 the rhythm has been broken by lockdowns called for particular days, when shops stay shut and streets empty, by curfews, and by a heavy security presence. Many families have members who have moved to Douala or abroad, and money sent home is an important part of household income.

Buea eats the food of the Southwest. Eru is the dish the region is known for: finely shredded Gnetum leaves cooked down with waterleaf, palm oil, dried fish, cow skin and meat, and eaten with water fufu, the soft pounded cassava that gives it its name. Achu, pounded cocoyam served with a spicy yellow palm-oil sauce, is the other highland staple, and corn fufu with njama njama, stewed huckleberry greens, is an everyday meal.

The volcanic soils supply the markets with plantain, cocoyam, sweet potato, tomatoes, avocados, bush mango and pepper, and the coast below sends up fish. Roadside grills sell soya, thin beef skewers dusted with spiced groundnut, roast fish with fiery pepper sauce, roast plantain and safou, the purple bush plum softened over the coals. Puff-puff, fried dough balls, and beans with fried plantain are the standard cheap breakfast around the motor parks and the university.

Palm wine is the traditional drink, tapped on the slopes and sold fresh in the mornings, and locally brewed corn beer appears at ceremonies; bottled lager and soft drinks are everywhere else. Tea grown at the estate at Tole, in the foothills below the town, is drunk sweet with milk, and strong coffee from the highlands further north turns up in the student cafés of Molyko.