CAMEROON
The slopes of Mt Cameroon, with Pico Basile, Equatorial Guinea in the background. (Photo: S.A. Laird)
Mt. Cameroon is an active volcano, the largest mountain in West Africa, and one of the most biologically diverse places on earth. The indigenous Bakweri and other groups living around Mt. Cameroon and in Southwest Province retain strong traditional resource management systems that grow from deep historical and cultural connections to place. However, biodiversity, forests and traditional knowledge and practices are under pressure from industrial agriculture, oil, and other global economic and cultural forces.
The Mt. Cameroon Traditional Foodways Program is working to shore up and conserve threatened traditional food systems, including the management, harvesting, cultivation, and preparation of traditional foods. Our work grows from many years of collaboration with Bakweri and migrant villages, local NGOs and institutions around Mt. Cameroon.
The Traditional Foodways Program has documented traditional management practices in the Mt Cameroon area for more than 25 years. Our work today is focused on knowledge exchange and education, including manuals, video and posters. Manuals include drawings by local artists; myths and stories from older members of the community; current and historical uses of species; ecology and management; and the importance of species in local livelihoods and traditions.
Hunter with dogs on Mt Cameroon. (Photo: S.A. Laird)
The manuals and videos include:
Wild, cultivated and semi-domesticated traditional foods of Mt. Cameroon
Medicine as food, and food as medicine
Homegardens of Mt. Cameroon
Traditional musical instruments, music, and dance of Mt Cameroon
Traditional games of Mt. Cameroon
Manuals, videos and posters serve as the basis for interactive education and outreach programs in schools and villages. In these programs, elders bring young people to harvest and cook foods no longer widely consumed (for example, a wider range of greens, mushrooms, yams, and forest fruits), to collect and process medicinal plants, and gather materials from the forest to make musical instruments and pieces for games. To create an atmosphere of celebration, and support complementary and overlapping forms of traditional knowledge that are also disappearing, games, dance, and music are included in this project, as are home gardens, the source of many foods, and plants used as both food and medicine. Events in local towns celebrate traditional foods and the people who harvest, grow and cook them, and the forests and biodiversity on which they depend.
Eposi Sophie, Cameroon, grinding forest and fallow spices including Tetrapleura tetraptera, Ricinodendron heudelotii, and Piper guineensis. (Photo: Litonga Ndive Elias)
Emilia Likowo Ndive in her farm on Mt Cameroon, with crops and lemongrass, Cymbopogon citratus, a global medicinal, and Solanaum spp. a local medicinal and protection species in the foreground. (Photo: S.A. Laird)
Likombe Village, Mt Cameroon. (Photo: S.A. Laird)
Ndive Cecilia Mojoko in her kitchen. Likombe village, Mt Cameroon. (Photo: S.A. Laird)
Education
In partnership with the Wildflower Foundation, Forests Resources and People (FOREP) and the Limbe Botanic Garden (LBG), training and education programs were held in the Limbe Botanic Garden in 2022, including:
Interpretive materials on traditional foodways and useful plants in the Limbe Botanic Garden, focused on medicinal, spice and food species.
Training guides to communicate more effectively to make information more accessible and interesting to visitors, including the uses and cultural values of plants.
Education programs for children from the town of Limbe, including Saturday programs in the botanic garden focused on ecosystem and biodiversity conservation, and traditional foodways. Field trips from schools included traditional foodways activities, including preparation of traditional dishes from the Bakweri, Ngolo and Eyang tribes, and exploring links between species in the botanic garden that contribute to traditional foods, and conservation.
Recipe Videos
A series of recipe videos were produced in the Mt Cameroon region in 2022 as part of an on-going educational program highlighting the links between food, culture and place, and threats to species and forests integral to important local foods. The videos include Martha Dialle preparing ngonyawembe, and Emilia and Cecilia Ndive preparing kwakoko and mbanga soup, in Likombe village. In Limbe, Sophie Eposi prepares kwakoko bible, and Immaculate Sambit prepares fufu corn, njamajama and fish.
The Team
Sarah Laird, Elias Ndive, Stella Asaha, Emilia Ndive, Ndumbe Paul, Stephanie Ewi Lamma, Christopher Fominyam Njoh, Annette Dingha, Rita Lysinge, Claudette Dingha, Immaculate Sambit, Sophie Eposi and Cecilia Ndive.
Partners
The Charles Engelhard Foundation, The Melza M. and Frank Theodore Barr Foundation