Iceland review - 2015, Síða 66

64 ICELAND REVIEW
in Iceland—the best new roads would be
found in the constituency of whoever hap-
pened to be minister for roads. The long-
est-serving president in the world, Biya has
been in office for almost 40 years. Iceland’s
own Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson is number
17 on the list of the world’s longest-serving
national leaders, flanked by Yahya Jammeh
of The Gambia and Denis Sassou Nguesso
of the Republic of Congo. We are in famil-
iar territory.
We reach the village of Ndop and people
shout “white men” when we walk past the
football field where Mile 27 Social Club
plays Solidarity Social Club. The school-
girls in this part of the country have regu-
lation cropped hair.
Having passed through Foumban, the
home of the Sultan of Bamum whose fore-
fathers founded their kingdom in 1394, we
finally arrive in Bamenda.
The Skyline Hotel is perched 200 meters
above the town, and like most hotels in
this part of the world it’s run-down. The
only other guests are a middle-aged couple
driving a Mercedes SUV. The woman is
expensively dressed, with her finest jewels.
The man looks unhappy. In the evening we
see the most spectacular lightning show
and wake at 5:30 the next morning to wit-
ness the sun come up over the town below.
Thick plumes of smoke from cooking fires
rise from every house. The photographer
had been so impressed with the show of
thunder and lightning the night before that
he went out to the balcony, leaving the door
ajar and the lights in his room switched on.
He paid for his carelessness with hundreds
of insect bites and no sleep.
Something about Bamenda feels right. I
have spent a big chunk of my adult life in
London, and bits of it in Amsterdam and
Brussels, but now I feel like I have actually
traveled somewhere, at last. The writer
Paul Bowles said, “I’ve always wanted to
get as far as possible from the place where
I was born. Far both geographically and
spiritually. To leave it behind …” We are
the only white people in Bamenda.
We spend the next couple of days explor-
ing villages in the mountains around
Bamenda. It’s Cameroon’s national holiday
and celebrations are underway. Groups
of the president’s supporters are march-
ing in specially-made costumes with Biya’s
photo and some slogans. Most of them
are unemployed and are paid to show
their support. On the outskirts of Bali,
burned-down houses are guarded by men
with Kalashnikovs, the aftermath of land
disputes escalating out of control. They
smile and wave us through. People dressed
in their finest wait for bush-taxis to take
them to celebrations in Santa. Most of the
taxis are battered old Toyota Corollas. We
count one of them carrying 16 people: four
in the front, five in the back, four sitting on
the roof and three on the back. We briefly
entertain the idea of leaving our present
lives behind and becoming bush-taxi driv-
ers.
EXPLORATION LONG GONE
It’s a strange feeling being back in my car
heading to a farm in South Iceland, my
wife by my side, the children in the back
seat. Everything is familiar but somehow
different as well. I feel like a mini-Thesiger,
there’s a bit of that Dufferin spirit in me.
Drunk from my experiences of Africa I feel
that I have traveled so much further afield
than the people in this southern region of
Iceland. For them, the world stretches per-
haps from Höfn to Reykjavík.
My wife is working on a project which
brings young designers together with farm-
ers to try to create new products from
Icelandic farming. On this trip we are vis-
iting farmers growing rhubarb just east of
Selfoss. We’re invited in for coffee.
It turns out that Dóra the farmer was
born in Germany. She moved to Iceland
as a young woman, mainly because of an
interest in the Icelandic horse. She lived
in Ísafjörður in the West Fjords, where she
worked as a tourism representative, before
relocating to the farm east of Selfoss to
grow rhubarb. After chatting for a while
she tells us that as a hobby she likes to dress
up as a Viking, taking part in staged battles,
together with her daughter. “How won-
derful,” I remark. “Are these by any chance
pieces of Viking jewelry that you are wear-
ing?” “Yes,” she says, “they are exact replicas
of Viking pieces that were unearthed by
archaeologists in Denmark.” I wonder how
these exquisite bronze rings and bracelets
were made. “Oh, I travel to a place called
Bamenda in northern Cameroon, they are
experts at casting bronze using beeswax.
I just returned from there a couple of
months ago. We all wear these pieces to
battle.” On the drive home I am quiet. I
feel a connection to this woman, because
we had both experienced the magic of
northern Cameroon and I assume we both
saw the world in the same light. But at the
same time, I am disappointed. I don’t think
Dufferin would have returned home to
Clandeboye from his travels, only to run
into someone who said: “Oh, back from
Iceland, are you? I was there last week.
Magical place.”
The notion of being an explorer is dead;
Wilfred Thesiger, Edmund Hillary and
Lord Dufferin were the last of a kind.
The whole world has been mapped, doc-
umented and photographed. But nothing
on Google could prepare you for the real
experience of standing on the shore at
Raufarhöfn, facing the northern gale on a
late summer’s day, or hiding under a tree
during an almighty downpour on the per-
fect white beach in Kribi, looking at fisher-
men bringing in their catch from the Gulf
of Guinea. Besides, if Dufferin had arrived
on the bus from Keflavík Airport in 2015,
he would be discovering Reykjavík as if for
the first time. *
Halldór Lárusson has lived in four countries and
traveled to many more. He has degrees in econom-
ics, philosophy and history of science.
TRAVEL
In Bgambi village in northern Cameroon the children
play football in the middle of the day when most
people seek shelter from the heat.