The Day We Went to the Palace
Not Buckingham Palace, but a much more interesting one. We went to meet the king. In his country he is known as the Fon. The Fon of Bafut.
We were visiting our friends Ngu and Ngubi. He was a colleague of mine in the Maths department at the university of Oran in Algeria. She was at the same university but in the department of pharmacology.
We lived in the Cité Radieuse in the university’s housing complex, in the seventies, they with their lovely little boy Abo (who sadly died a few years ago in a motor accident in the US, having only recently completed his Ph d). We were best friends and saw each other everyday. During the long vacations, it was a no-brainer that we would visit them in Victoria in the Cameroon. We had gone to Mauritius, and were able to get a return ticket to Oran via Nairobi and Douala.
Our friends were staying in the large family house on the outskirts of Victoria, which Ngu’s brother was in the process of extending so our friends could live there when they left Algeria.
We were received with great pomp, and thoroughly enjoyed the feasts they laid out for us everyday, and the sightseeing tours.
They also wangled an invitation to the royal palace for P and me. They were going to see the Fon on official business, and when they mentioned that they were entertaining visitors from overseas, his majesty suggested we joined them.
The business was connected with deeds of their family property. Perhaps about a century ago, the great grandfather of the current Fon of Bafut, awarded our friend’s ancestor some land, which had been in his family for over a hundred years, but there were no titles or any paper evidence that the land belonged to them. A few years previously the government had decided to modernise the institutions, and urged people to put their claims to the property under strict legal format.
The family had been working on this for some years with their lawyers. They had to collect evidence to the effect that they or family had lived there since the year dot.
Pivotal to the legalisation was the testimony of the Griot. In times when business was done on trust,there were no papers involved. Transactions were witnessed by men of the strictest integrity who could be summoned to give testimony in case of litigation. The Griot was such a man. He had to have a prodigious memory to keep the essence of the negotiations involving the whole village in his head. But because man is not immortal, he had to train his son or sons, and pass on all the informations in his possession to the latter.
Ngu and Ngubi were very optimistic that this visit to the Bafut Palace would settle the matter once and for all. It was going to be a couple of hours drive. Early in the morning a van and a car were loaded with various commodities which they had been instructed by the palace authorities to bring along. Bags of rice, millet, sugar, corn, beans, dried fish, gallons of oil, hundred metres of cotton, cigarettes beer, whisky etc… We were in one car, and the provisions in the van.
I was a bit surprised that someone going to seek a legal verdict had to bring so many gifts to the judge, but my hosts assured us that this was not a bribe destined to the Fon, but a sort of payment to the institution. The Fon, in his capacity as arbiter and protector of the village traditions, had to receive a large number of people who sometimes came from very far. These people had to be lodged and fed, and sometimes entertained. The offerings complemented the meagre allocation he received from the exchequer.
It rained during the whole of the journey, so we saw very little of the countryside we were driving along. When we arrived, a palace official ushered us inside a big tent on the palace grounds, where the proceedings were going to take place. We were the only people whose case was going to be heard that day.
The moment we had been seated we were served a beer and peanuts.
Shortly afterwards his majesty the Fon arrived. He was very simply dressed in a cotton pair of trousers and a modest agbada and a Nigerian hat. He was wearing leather sandals, which Ngu informed me was because he had eczema round his ankles.
He greeted us politely and bade us welcome in his country. He said to P that he had heard many good things about Finland and hoped to visit that lovely country one day.
Then entered the Griot. He too was simply dressed. He greeted us with cold reserve. We were invited to form a small arc round his majesty, seated on a dais, at a large table. The king said a few words and the Griot walked towards his table. Ngubi then translated the proceedings which was in fula. The king asked him a few questions and he began: In the year of the two great floods, when locusts devastated the whole of the millet harvest, my great grandfather Griot Abdoulaye, blessed be his memory, witnessed the ceremony in which your majesty’s great grandfather Fon Kidjo, blessed be his memory awarded to his trusted servant Ndifor Bola Ndumu the property which I will describe:The land enclosing the area bounded by the perimeter between the Three Rocks to the tall iroko to the dried pond, and then bordering the ridge all the way towards the coconut plantation which is now gone towards the Three Rocks. The gift includes all the trees growing, all the beasts roaming and all the fish in the waters, and Ndifor Bola Ndumu can dispose of all or part of this bestowal as he chooses, and pass part or all thereof to his children. This information was transmitted to my grandfather Ahmadou, blessed be his soul, who taught his own son Bello who taught my own sainted father Emmanuel, who taught me, and gave me his blessing before he died, doing me the honour of saying that I was a worthy successor of him and his father and our ancestors, and was word perfect. This I swear to be the truth, on the heads of my children, including the unborn ones.
The Fon, Ngu and the Griot conferred for about half an hour, after which Ngu returned to where we were sitting with a big smile on his face. The Fon said a few words, which were translated to us. He was happy that another matter had been successfully resolved to everybody’s satisfaction.
He signed a paper, a minion stamped it and he handed it over to our friend. He would take this to the Registry Office in Victoria, and in due course the family would be issued with the official deeds to the property that they had laid claim to.
