Changes by law and administration

Cameroon has as many African nations, a sort of double administrative system inherited from colonial times. The colonial administrators were concerned with

‘pacifying’ the country, and generally tried to prevent all kinds of bloodshed, also in the case of death penalties used in traditional courts. At the same time, these traditional courts, usually centered round the chief, kept some jurisdiction over less important affairs, such as marriage disputes and inheritance rulings. There are for example still two legal forms of marriage in Cameroon, with different ways of divorcing or regulating the affairs.

In the civil marriage, both parties sign a marriage certificate that specifies whether the marriage will be monogamous or polygamous, while traditional marriages have no legal hinders for polygamy. The civil marriage is solemnised at the sous-prefecture or other public office, with or without a Western style marriage feast. The traditional marriage is celebrated by the families, after contracting about dowry (also called bride price), and with traditional rituals, more or less Islamized. The extended family pitch in to make a memorable feast; each invited guest to the feast is expected to give some money, and the women of the family work hard to make all the food necessary to feed a large number of people for several days. Preparations such as to pound the maize for the feast are festive social occasions in their own right, with chanting and drumming accompanying the work. Sometimes both forms of marriage are used together, and there certainly is an active uptake of Western-style marriage customs, often transformed in interesting ways, as when the groom is given a bouquet of plastic flowers to hold for the official photograph while his new wife rests hidden from all eyes, and especially the groom’s, in her new house.

4.6. A PLACE IN MODERN SOCIETY

Integration processes

Though Cameroon is in many respects a modern country with modern admin-istrative infrastructure and regulations, these by no means reach each and every citizen and all places. Visiting the large village Wogomdou on a market day in 2005, I met a civil servant from the sous-préfecture in Galim who had put up a table in the shade under the large tree in front of thejawro’s compound. Here he sat with a large pile of some fifty or sixty new identity cards commissioned by people in the area, waiting for them to show up and get their cards. Now every-body in Cameroon is required by law to always carry identification papers; you get arrested and/or fined if you can not present your ID to thegendarmerieat any time and place. Still, there evidently was a substantial group of people here, both older and younger, who had managed without such papers up until now, in these fairly remote corners of the Adamaoua.

To get an ID card you must normally have a birth certificate, which is also a rare piece of paper in many villages. The first place where such a paper may be required is at the registration of the child in school. But if there is no school, the children do not need it much, and consequently parents often neglect to get a birth certificate for their children, or at least put it off for several years. When it is finally made, some prefer to enter a birth date convenient for some purpose, such as staying on in primary school after the age of fourteen, or enter some other education with an age limit. Official ages are rarely to be trusted.

Birth certificates and ID cards also concern naming practices among the Nizaa.

The Nizaa names are not always written if or when the birth certificate is made, and so disappear from all official identification of the person. The last problem is also connected to the fact that Nizaa names do not have standardised spellings, as the language so recently has been developed as a written language. The Fuláenames have a longstanding written standard already, and are more easily understood by any civil servant making out certificates. Patronyms are always required for such cards, introducing more and more the two name system imported from the colonial powers. The use of patronyms as a normal part of a person’s name also underscores the importance of the father as head of the family, though both mother’s name and father’s name are required to get an ID card or birth certificate.

What we see illustrated in the simple story of a civil servant giving out ID cards is that many common administrative functions are still in the process of seeping out into countryside. This applies both to the need for identification papers and the possibility of actually getting them without traveling to a larger administrative center. The same process is taking place in a number of other sectors. Health, education, sanitation in the villages, veterinary services, hunting regulations and wild life preservation are all areas where the Cameroonian government is

slowly expanding its efforts, often relying on local initiative to identify needs and resources.

This is especially true of schools. While there clearly has been a great effort from the school authorities in the last years to expand the schooling facilities in the more rural parts of the country, the usual path to actually getting a school often goes by way of local commitment. In several of the villages around Galim, the school has started out as a local parent’s school, with parents paying a more or less educated young man of the village to teach their children. He will normally be acknowledged by the school inspector in Galim, and so may be invited to participate in teacher reunions. If the village parents can keep this up for a year or two, or maybe three, showing that there is real interest in the village for sending their children to school, the government may involve itself by officially creating the school, giving it some teaching materials and books and send a trained school teacher to the village on a public salary. He will not be able to teach the full primary cycle all by himself, but he will start out with a first grade class, and teach a combined first and second grade class next year, hoping to get another teacher to share the burden later. The next step is to build a proper school building, the nascent public school usually having made do with some locally made structure till then — a large entrance hut, a straw hut or just a straw roof with benches.

The prospect of later getting a school building of durable materials and a state-paid teacher was actively used in parent’s meetings to motivate villagers to send their children to school and sacrifice something to pay a teacher. Even when the school and some teachers are in place, there are not always enough teacher resources to teach a complete six-year cycle, see Table 6.2 in 6.3 on page 226, and so the population is again asked to provide something themselves, with the understanding that this will also earn them some favour with the administration later on.

Health clinics have been around since the late 1930s when the Norwegian missionary Dr. Kristian Skulberg set up a medical service in Galim (Lode 1990, 64). Thedispensaireof the Norwegian Mission Society, later the Cameroonian Lutheran church, kept catering to the needs of the population for many years until 1993, when it was closed after the opening of a state hospital in Galim. It was reopened about 10 years later, as the growing population of the area represents a large market for health services. Some services are brought out of Galim by personnel of the hospital having service days in other villages, or by larger vaccination campaigns. More important for public health issues is the fact that there now are roads to many corners of the area, making it much more feasible to bring sick people to the hospital. Again some of the roads have been constructed not by the government, but as a result of local engagement, in some cases led by a village development project of the Lutheran church.

All of these processes are furthering the integration of the countryside in the

4.6. A PLACE IN MODERN SOCIETY

modern state of Cameroon, in Galim-Tignère as elsewhere. The administration, by allowing private initiative along with their own efforts, comes to have a better control of the population and a better possibility for caring for the citizens.

Generally these processes are viewed positively by the population and serve well the administration’s purpose of integration. So along with the development of e.g.

schools, there has been a growing interest in schooling and a greater understanding of the benefits of knowing French and other subjects, of getting an education and a chance in the larger job market, and of doing things the way others in Cameroon do them. Some of the interest stems from the fact that the exigencies of the larger society are reaching people along with the benefits. The process of adjusting to the general views and practices of a larger Cameroonian society is well underway among the Nizaa.

In the beginning of the present chapter we looked at the communal Nizaa selfpresentation on the outer and inner walls of thechefferieof Galim. Its blend of historical roots, Moslem symbols of power and linguistic items of Fulfulde and French origin is a veritable snapshot of some of the most important forces which has contributed to shape the sociocultural environment of Nizaa children. In this environment, their lives are lived out both in the backways and courtyards of the village, on the public plaza, and in the fields and valleys surrounding the village, as we saw in the later sections of the chapter. Here they soak up learning from the cultural community in which they move. They are taught skills as they work.

They are taught how to speak and be spoken to by elders and youngers as they watch interaction and interact themselves with other people. They learn games and knowledge as they play with each other, building a peer culture from the ways of earlier generations, but still belonging to its present participants.

The forces of the common cultural and linguistic background, and of the practices of their local community, are directly relevant to what and how Nizaa children learn outside school. What knowledge and competencies do Nizaa children bring with them as they enter school? What speech genres do they draw upon in their interaction with others? This is the theme of the next chapter.

Chapter 5

Speech genres of learning in the