Foumban

Bamum tradition dates the kingdom to about 1394, when Nshare Yen led a group east across the Noun river and established a capital on the site of Foumban, subduing the small chiefdoms around it. His successors built a centralised state with a court, a standing army, titled notables and a network of tributary villages; by the 19th century the Bamum were among the strongest of the grassfields kingdoms, and the town was their political and ritual centre.

The reign that made Foumban famous was that of Njoya, who came to the throne in the 1880s and ruled until 1933. He devised a script for the Bamum language from 1896, revising it repeatedly into a semi-syllabary, had a history of his kingdom and a book of medicine written in it, opened schools and a printing works, and had the palace that stands today built in 1917, a tall building often compared to a European chateau. Njoya negotiated in turn with the German administration and then with the French, who deposed him and exiled him to Yaoundé, where he died.

The kingdom survived the colonial period and independence as a traditional institution within the Cameroonian state, and Foumban became the administrative centre of the Noun department. The town also holds a political place in the country's history: the constitutional conference of July 1961 that shaped the federation of French-speaking and English-speaking Cameroon was held here, though the constitution itself was agreed in Yaoundé the following month. Craft production, taught at the palace and later at the town's art school, remains its best-known industry.

Foumban is a royal town, and the palace sets its rhythm. The ruler, addressed as sultan or king, presides with the notables over ceremonies in the open ground before the palace, and the Nguon, the kingdom's old assembly at which the ruler answers for his reign, is the great event of the Bamum calendar, with masked dancers, drums and processions.

The Bamum are largely Muslim, unusually for the southern highlands, following Njoya's conversion in the early 20th century, though Christian and traditional practice also persist and the three coexist within families. Friday prayers, the two Eids and the palace's own festivals structure the year.

Craft is the town's other identity. Bamum work is recognisable across Cameroon: bronze and brass cast by the lost-wax method into figures, pipes and vessels; carved stools and doorposts with human and animal motifs; beaded masks and thrones; and embroidered cloth, including the indigo ndop textile used in royal ceremony. The skills are handed down within families of casters and carvers whose workshops line the street from the palace, and the institute of fine arts the University of Dschang opened here in 2009 trains new generations. Njoya's script survives as a symbol of Bamum identity and is taught again after decades of decline, appearing on signs and on the manuscripts kept in the palace museum.

The town had about 84,000 residents at the 2005 census and has grown since, though it remains much smaller than Bafoussam, the regional capital an hour and a half away. Most families combine trade or craft work with farming on the plain around the town, growing maize, cassava, groundnuts, coffee and vegetables, and keeping cattle on the grasslands north of the Noun.

Public employment, schools and the departmental administration provide salaried work, and craft production supports a large number of households, selling to traders and to visitors from Douala and Yaoundé as well as abroad. The tourist trade that once brought steady visitors has been thinner since the conflict in the neighbouring English-speaking regions began, and many young people leave for the coastal cities or for France.

Days begin early and cool. Markets fill in the morning, motorcycle taxis buzz along the main roads, and the afternoons are quieter. Weekends belong to weddings, funerals and the meetings of savings groups, the tontines, which are as important in the West Region's social life as in its economy. The palace, the mosques and the churches anchor a town where the old institutions are visibly part of the present.

Foumban eats the food of the western highlands, adapted to a Muslim town where pork is largely absent and beef and chicken are the meats of choice. Pounded taro or cocoyam with a yellow palm-oil sauce is the celebratory dish; kondre, a stew of unripe plantain with meat, onions and spices, appears at family meals; and koki, a steamed pudding of ground black-eyed peas and palm oil wrapped in banana leaves, is sold by the slice.

Maize is the everyday staple, eaten as corn fufu with stewed huckleberry greens or as a thick porridge, and rice with a groundnut or tomato sauce is standard restaurant fare. The plain supplies beans, groundnuts, plantain, avocados, honey and, from the volcanic slopes nearby, arabica coffee. Beef from the northern herds is grilled as soya, thin skewers dusted with spiced peanut, on street corners after dark, and safou, the purple bush plum, is roasted over the same coals in season.

Drinks lean away from alcohol in many households: foléré, a cold infusion of hibiscus flowers, ginger juice, and sweet tea are common, while palm wine and bottled beer are sold in the bars of the market quarter. Groundnut sweets and beignets fried in the morning are the usual street snacks.