Ngaoundéré

The Adamawa plateau was the country of the Mbum, Dii, Gbaya and neighbouring peoples, who farmed and kept cattle on the grassland and gave the hill above the present city its name, ngaou ndere, the navel mountain. Their chiefdoms held the plateau until the Fulani jihad of the early 19th century swept south from Sokoto and founded the emirate of Adamawa under Modibo Adama.

Ngaoundéré was founded in the 1830s, when Fulani under Ardo Njobdi took the Mbum settlement on the site, and it became one of the emirate's lamidates, ruled by a lamido with a court of titled officials, a cavalry and tributary villages. Islam and Fulfulde spread across the plateau with the new order, cattle-keeping expanded, and those who resisted withdrew into hill country or were raided. Germany conquered the region at the turn of the 20th century and governed through the lamidos, a system the French continued after 1916; the palace and its institutions survived into the independent state.

The railway made the modern city. The line north from Yaoundé, completed in 1973, ended here, and Ngaoundéré became the transfer point between rail and road for goods moving to the far north, to Chad and to the Central African Republic. A university followed in 1993, and the city grew steadily with traders, transporters, students and, in later years, people displaced by conflict in neighbouring countries and in Cameroon's own troubled regions. It remains the administrative capital of Adamawa and the hinge between the country's north and south.

The lamidate gives Ngaoundéré its public character. The lamido holds court in a palace whose entrance hall is built in the old style, with a high thatched roof on carved posts, and appears at the Muslim festivals surrounded by horsemen in embroidered robes and quilted armour, with drummers and long trumpets. Titles, protocol and a culture of restraint — the Fulani ideal of pulaaku — shape formal life.

The city is more mixed than that suggests. Mbum, Dii and Gbaya families whose ancestors held the plateau, Mbororo herders who move cattle across it, southerners posted north for work, traders from Chad and the Central African Republic, and a large student population all live here, and churches stand alongside the mosques. Fulfulde serves as the common language of the market, with French for administration and schooling.

Cattle are more than an economy. Herding, milk, the trade in animals and the prestige of a large herd run through Mbororo and Fulani life, and they surface in weddings, naming ceremonies and the songs and dances that accompany them. Craftwork includes leather, embroidery and calabash decoration. Evenings are spent at tea stalls and grills, and the arrival of the overnight train gives the station quarter a rhythm of its own.

Ngaoundéré had about 150,000 residents at the 2005 census and is substantially larger now, having grown with migration from the countryside, with students, and with families displaced from the Central African Republic and from northern Cameroon.

The city lives on transport, trade, administration, education and cattle. Goods arriving by rail are transferred to lorries bound for Garoua, Maroua, N'Djamena and Bangui, which supports freight yards, garages and haulage firms; the regional government, hospitals and schools employ many; the university draws a student population estimated at about 30,000; and livestock markets channel herds from the plateau to the butchers of Yaoundé and Douala. Farms around the city grow maize, millet, groundnuts and vegetables, and the plateau's honey is well known.

Days begin cool and early, with markets busiest in the morning and the streets quiet through the hottest hours. Motorcycle taxis dominate the roads, and the evening belongs to grills, tea stalls and football. Poverty is greater than in the south and public services are stretched, and residents follow both road security on the routes north and east and the fortunes of the railway, whose performance affects trade across the whole region.

Ngaoundéré eats northern food with a plateau accent. The staple is boule, called couscous locally — maize, millet or sorghum flour cooked to a stiff paste, rolled by hand and dipped into a sauce of okra, groundnuts, dried fish or leaves such as sorrel and baobab. Rice with sauce and beans with fried plantain fill out the everyday menu.

Beef is the city's pride, as it is across the cattle country of Adamawa. Meat is grilled over charcoal in the evenings, sold by weight and eaten with raw onion and pepper; soya, thin skewers dusted with spiced groundnut, is the standard street snack; and kilichi, the dried spiced beef of the north, is sold in the market and carried away by travellers. Fresh and soured milk from Fulani and Mbororo herds is drunk or poured over millet porridge, and the plateau's honey is eaten with bread and used in sweets.

Drinks follow the religious mix: sweet tea and coffee at street stalls, foléré, a cold hibiscus infusion, ginger and tamarind drinks, with bottled beer in the bars of the station quarter and sorghum beer brewed in villages outside the city. Mangoes, groundnuts and roast maize are the common snacks in season.