Farewell Tour

As part of my farewell tour, I went to Bamenda. I feel like half my posts are about me visiting Bamenda from Buea. Woops.

First I went to visit my host family in Baffoussam. Almost everyone was gone, which I should have realized, because it is the school holiday. My host parents and 2 oldest brothers were there though. My host mom gave me the recipe for Koki (which I discussed making with her before) and I am going to attempt making it when I get back.

Koki ingredients:
8 cups Koki bean (cow peas)
6-10 peppers depending on how hot they are
3-4 cups water
1.5 TB kamwa*
2 cups palm oil
salt to taste

*Kamwa is a type of mineral or something (it looks like a stone) but you can make a substitute by drying banana or plantain peels, grinding them, then rehydrating them. I'm told this is neccessary because otherwise after eating koki you will need to "run to the latrine".

Koki instructions:
1. Soak your koki bean 4-5 hours
2. wash the koki beans well and remove the peelings (this step takes forever)
3. Grind with pimente
4. Add Kawma
5. Add oil and water
6. Bake 4-5 hours (on a fire). Leave room for it to expand

In Bamenda I went with a Cameroonian friend to visit the Fon and say goodbye. He told us about the rascal in village who wants to marry his daughter, but is a big Banga (pot) smoker and doesn't have a job that he approves of (he is a sand miner).
Conversation turned to how crazy this man is.

My friend: Are you sure that man is not going mad?
Fon: eh?
My friend: He is carrying many bibles
Fon: That is how it starts.

Our next conversation was about raising money to build a new church.

He also showed me the apartment that he is building for me in his palace, which I suppose is meant to be mine if I was a queen. It had 2 rooms and an adjacent traditional kitchen. Lucky me!

Leaving Bamenda was actually very sad. I was tearing up when the bus pulled out of the station. I stopped however when it turned out that we were just getting gas and returning to the station. We then waited for an hour while 2 people argued about who was supposed to sit in a seat.