Maroua

The Diamaré plain was settled long before the city took shape, by the Giziga and related peoples whose chiefdoms held the land around the rocky hills that rise from the flat country. Maroua itself grew at a crossing of the Kaliao river, where the plain meets the roads into the Mandara mountains, and its markets drew traders from the mountains and from the Lake Chad basin.

The decisive change came with the Fulani jihad of the early 19th century, which spread from Sokoto across the plains and founded the emirate of Adamawa. Fulani leaders established a lamidate at Maroua, displacing or subordinating the existing chiefdoms, and the town became one of a chain of lamidates that included Garoua, Ngaoundéré and Rey Bouba. Islam, Fulfulde and a courtly style of authority spread with them, while peoples who resisted withdrew into the mountains to the west.

Germany conquered the north at the turn of the 20th century and, like the French after 1916, governed through the lamidos rather than replacing them. Under French administration Maroua became an administrative centre; after independence it grew as the seat of government for the Far North, gaining schools, a hospital, an airport at Salak and, in 2008, a university. From around 2014 the Boko Haram insurgency spread from north-eastern Nigeria into the region, bringing attacks, a large military deployment and waves of displaced families into the city, and ending the tourist traffic that had passed through on the way to Waza and Rhumsiki.

Maroua is a Muslim, Fulfulde-speaking city with a courtly tradition. The lamido remains a figure of authority alongside the state administration, receiving visitors in his palace and appearing at the two Eids with horsemen in embroidered robes and quilted armour, accompanied by drummers and long trumpets. Pulaaku, the Fulani code of reserve, dignity and patience, shapes how people speak and behave in public.

Around the Fulani core the city is far more mixed than it first appears. Mafa, Mofu, Kapsiki, Podoko and other mountain peoples, Kotoko and Shuwa Arabs from the plains towards Lake Chad, Mbororo herders and southerners posted north for work all live here, and Christian churches stand among the mosques. Fulfulde serves as the common language of the market, with French for administration.

Craft is the city's signature. Maroua leather — sandals, bags, cushions, saddlery — is known across Cameroon, worked in small courtyard workshops and sold in the craft market, alongside embroidered robes, indigo-dyed cloth, woven mats, pottery and decorated calabashes. Music and dance belong to the calendar of weddings, naming ceremonies and festivals, and evenings are spent over glasses of very sweet tea at street stalls, a habit as much social as refreshing.

Maroua had about 200,000 residents at the 2005 census and is considerably larger now, swollen by people displaced from border villages as well as by ordinary migration from the countryside.

The city lives on trade, administration and crafts rather than industry. It is the marketplace for the Diamaré plain and the mountains, dealing in millet, sorghum, groundnuts, onions, cotton and cattle; the regional government, hospitals, schools and the university provide salaried work; and leatherwork, tailoring, dyeing and pottery employ many households. International aid agencies have had a substantial presence since the insurgency began, and camps to the west of the city shelter refugees who have crossed from Nigeria.

Days start before dawn while the air is cool. Markets are busiest in the early morning, work slows through the hot middle of the day, and life returns in the late afternoon, with grills, tea stalls and football on open ground. Motorcycle taxis swarm the main roads. Poverty is deeper here than in southern Cameroon, school enrolment lower, and the seasonal extremes — drought, flood, searing heat — shape household fortunes. Security checks, curfews and the presence of soldiers are a constant of the city's routine.

Northern food is built on grain. Boule, called couscous in local French, is a stiff paste of millet, sorghum or maize flour rolled into a ball by hand and dipped into a sauce — okra thickened until it pulls, dried fish, sorrel, baobab leaf or a groundnut sauce. It is eaten at the midday and evening meals in most households.

Cattle make the difference between the north and the rest of Cameroon. Beef appears as kilichi, thin sheets of meat coated in spiced groundnut paste and sun-dried, sold in every market and carried south as a gift; as soya, skewers grilled over charcoal and dusted with peanut and pepper; and roasted whole at celebrations. Fresh and soured milk from Fulani herds is drunk or poured over millet porridge, and mutton is the meat of the Eids. Fish comes dried and smoked from the Logone and the Lake Chad basin.

Drinks reflect the religious mix: sweet tea and coffee at the street stalls, foléré, a cold infusion of red hibiscus flowers, ginger juice and tamarind drinks, with sorghum beer brewed in the mountain villages rather than the city. Dates, mangoes and groundnuts are the common snacks, and bread from small bakeries is eaten at breakfast with beans or omelette.