Bamenda, Bafoussam & the Western Highlands

The highlands were settled by many small Grassfields peoples, organised from at least the 17th century into kingdoms ruled by a fon or a chief with sacred powers, regulatory societies and titled nobles. The largest was the Bamum kingdom, founded in the 14th century according to its own traditions and ruled from Foumban. Its best-known king, Njoya, who reigned from about 1886 to 1933, invented a script for the Bamum language, built a palace and schools, and bargained with the Germans and then the French until he was deposed and exiled to Yaoundé.

The coast was the first part of the country known to Europeans. The Baptist missionary Alfred Saker founded Victoria, now Limbe, in 1858, and under German rule from 1884 the slopes of Mount Cameroon became plantations of cocoa, bananas and rubber, with the colonial government seated for a time at Buea. After the First World War the Northwest and Southwest were run by Britain as part of Nigeria, while the West region fell under France.

In the late 1950s and 1960s the UPC's armed struggle spread into the Bamiléké country, where it was suppressed with great loss of life. In 1961 British Southern Cameroons voted to join the newly independent Cameroon, with Buea as capital of a federated state; the federation was abolished in 1972. Grievances over the marginalisation of English law, schools and language led to lawyers' and teachers' protests in 2016, and after a government crackdown some separatists declared independence in 2017, beginning the armed conflict that continues today.

The Northwest and Southwest are English-speaking in schooling, law and government, and Cameroonian Pidgin English is the everyday language of markets and streets across both regions. The West region is French-speaking, with the Bamiléké languages — Ghomala', Medumba, Yemba and others — and Shü Pamom, the language of the Bamum, spoken at home. The Bamum are largely Muslim, a result of Njoya's conversion, while most other peoples of the highlands are Christian.

Royal institutions are still powerful. Fons and chiefs preside over palace compounds, and masked dancers appear at funerals and royal ceremonies. The Bamiléké are famous for elaborate funerals, and for a culture of enterprise and savings groups, the tontines, that has made them prominent in commerce across the country. The Bamum hold their Nguon festival in Foumban.

Craftwork is a regional speciality: Grassfields beaded thrones and masks, carved doorposts, and carving, weaving and embroidery in Foumban.

Bamenda, the main city of the Northwest, and Bafoussam, capital of the West, each have several hundred thousand people; Buea, Limbe, Kumba, Dschang and Foumban are the other main towns. The highlands are among the most densely farmed parts of Cameroon, growing maize, beans, potatoes, vegetables and arabica coffee, and their traders supply markets as far as Douala. On the coast, the plantations of the Cameroon Development Corporation grow bananas, palm oil and rubber, and Limbe has the national oil refinery.

The conflict dominates daily life in the Northwest and Southwest. Schools have been closed for long periods, many villages have been abandoned, and families have fled to Douala, Yaoundé and the West region, whose towns have grown with displaced people. Lockdowns imposed by separatists empty the streets of Bamenda and Buea. In the West region, life runs to the rhythm of weekly markets, church, the chiefdom's calendar and the weekend funeral.

The dish of the Northwest is achu, pounded cocoyam served in a smooth mound with a hole in the centre for "yellow soup", a spicy sauce of palm oil thickened with limestone. Corn fufu with njama njama, a dish of stewed huckleberry greens, is the everyday meal in the Bamenda grasslands. The Southwest's signature is eru, finely shredded Gnetum leaves cooked with waterleaf, palm oil, meat and dried fish, eaten with pounded cassava.

Bamiléké cooking uses the same highland crops: taro with a yellow palm-oil sauce, kondre, a stew of unripe plantain and meat, and koki, a steamed pudding of ground black-eyed peas and palm oil wrapped in banana leaves. Roadside grills sell corn, plantain and plums (the local name for the safou, a fruit roasted until soft). Palm wine is the traditional drink, and the highlands grow arabica coffee.

Mount Cameroon, an active volcano that erupted as recently as 2012, rises to about 4,000 metres from the sea, and in calmer years was climbed from Buea through rainforest, grassland and bare lava. The Race of Hope, a run up and down the mountain, was held there each year. Buea itself keeps German colonial buildings on its slopes, and at its foot Limbe has black-sand beaches, the botanic garden and the Limbe Wildlife Centre, which cares for rescued wildlife.

In the West region, Bafoussam is the base for the Bamiléké chiefdoms. The chiefdom of Bandjoun has one of the most imposing royal compounds, its great meeting house raised on carved wooden pillars under a tall conical thatched roof, and the museum of civilisations at Dschang explains the region's peoples. Foumban's palace, built in the early 20th century, holds the Bamum royal collection of thrones, weapons and manuscripts in Njoya's script, and the artisans' quarter sells carvings.

The Ring Road, a loop around the Bamenda highlands, passes the palace of the Fon of Bafut, the Kom kingdom, the Nso capital Kumbo, and the Kilum-Ijim forest and Lake Oku on the flanks of Mount Oku, home of the rare Bannerman's turaco. Lake Nyos, in the same highlands, released a cloud of carbon dioxide in 1986 that killed some 1,700 people.