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CHAPTER 1

Terrains in Transformation

Just a few days after my first arrival in Cameroon, I find myself sitting in a rather defective car grumbling about the high speed at which it is being driven through the rain forest. I join Filbert, his older brother, and a priest on their way to their natal village in the East Province, which is also going to be my fieldwork site for the next few months. Having lived and worked in urban areas for years now, the three men seem almost as eager to arrive in Asung as I am. They fill the one-hour trip with animated stories and recommendations about rural life, which seem to gain in liveliness as the volume of the upbeat religious music increases. The noisy joyfulness inside the car contrasts with what I see outside: extended areas of natural beauty and silent forest, with here and there some groups of mud huts. After the sudden fall of the night, only the cooking fires still reveal the presence of human settlements from time to time.

Unexpectedly, in the midst of the darkness and loud music, the three men simultaneously announce that "we have entered the village now." Noticing my surprised look and my searching for cooking fires or other signs of human presence, Filbert laughingly clarifies, "At least this is our terrain. Land is not lacking here. It is our wealth. All you see around us belongs to the Gbigbil people. They have their fields here on which some even sleep or reside." His brother relates how people used to live like that: scattered through the forest. Their current habitation in a village constructed alongside a road is actually the result of governmental pressure, he informs me. The priest comments that, thanks to the abundance of land, people have no problem obeying God's command to "go and multiply themselves" and make this new village grow. Only with a large offspring can they fully occupy and exploit this extended area.

Listening to these lively discussions I notice how, after what seemed a never-ending trip through the vast and dark "terrain," wood fires surround us again and announce to us our arrival in the inhabited part of village. We come to a halt in front of my new home, the local health center. The illuminated brick building stands in shrill contrast to the dark houses that surround it. The light bulb at the entrance illuminates some shabby posters promoting family planning and a lonely goat that has installed itself on the empty benches. The air of desertion that surrounds the place makes room for a vibe of excitement, however, once I enter the patients' ward where I will take residence. The many children of the doctor gather curiously around me, while the baby on his wife's back immediately starts to cry at my sight. Some relatives of sick patients come to greet me. With the help of Filbert, his brother, and the priest, I settle down in the village that I will continue to visit long afterward.

While Filbert's car brought me into the village of Asung, the first part of this book will continue the journey through the local terrains — not only the vast, physical terrain about which my three friends spoke so proudly, but also the metaphorical "terrain" of the village. In its figurative sense, a "terrain" connotes a sociopolitical environment that is "nontransparent and in motion rather than transparent, solid and stable" (Vigh 2006: 12). More than, for example, the notion of "field" (Bourdieu 1977, 1989), a terrain captures the constant shifts of structural organizations that people create, attempt to make sense of, and navigate. This chapter will show that the terrains in which I did research and in which Gbigbil women experience and manage "wasted wombs" are highly unstable and unpredictable. Over time, political fragilities, economic insecurities, deteriorating sanitary conditions, social transformations, and contradictory discourses have come to pervade all domains of life. Such dynamics have affected people's immediate praxis and their imagined worldviews — which, in turn, direct the navigation of the reproductive conjunctures that are central to this book. Mapping the contexts of Gbigbil daily life practice, then, this chapter lays the basis for a deeper understanding of that navigation.

Movements over Time

Asung is a Gbigbil village in the rain forest area of East Cameroon that looks like many other settlements in the region, though it might be a bit larger than surrounding villages; it includes one thousand of the approximately six thousand people belonging to the Gbigbil ethnic group. Their terrain stretches over many square kilometers of green hills, and even the "center" of the village covers almost four kilometers of thatch-roofed mud huts and iron-roofed brick houses, regularly spread along the paved road. Every house is surrounded by one or more kitchens and a hangar (an open, thatch-roofed shed) in which people rest, cook on fire, eat, or discuss. Pigs, chickens, goats, and dogs roam around freely, lie down on the reddish earth, or rapidly disperse when traffic passes on the road — most of the time with a speed that is amazingly high considering its overload. The street is often full of people, too. Children run to and from school with books on their heads or try to sell some rôti (humps of bush meat) prepared by their mothers; women walk to and from their fields with huge basins on their heads and with their babies attached to their backs; and men go out for hunting or wait at the roadside with their self-brewed matango wine for a rare occasion of transportation toward a nearby market. The air is full of greetings exchanged between people in the hangars and those passing on the street. The atmosphere is peaceful but lively.

While most of contemporary life in Asung seems to revolve around this one paved road, the Gbigbil people were much more itinerant in the past. Until the end of the nineteenth century, inhabitants of this region did not establish themselves for a long time in sedentary settlements but led a seminomadic existence in the sparsely populated rain forest. Many of the groups that roamed through the woods would have been driven into the area during various wars with northern Fulani groups from the sixteenth century onward (Billard 1961; Johnson-Hanks 2006; Laburthe-Tolra 1981; Nelson et al. 1974). Processes of movement and migration have been endemic ever since. The Gbigbil people, however, would have been relatively autochthonous to the area (Dugast 1949). While some villagers claimed to have originated in Congo and others tended to locate their roots around the capital of Yaoundé, all agreed that their presence in the southeastern part of Cameroon spanned several centuries.

Throughout this period, the Gbigbil hardly formed a unified group. Social life was built on "segmentary" kinship principles: to become an adult and respected man was to separate oneself from the group, create an autonomous settlement, and become the chief of a new family unit. Power and respect depended on the number of followers (such as family members, wives, children, devotees, or slaves) one could subsequently subject to himself — a "wealth in people" principle that was widespread throughout the region (Copet-Rougier 1985, 1987; Geschiere 1982; Guyer 1984; Johnson-Hanks 2006; Laburthe-Tolra 1981). Movement of the self and of others thus constituted important markers of successful personhood and power.

Yet, hierarchies were never institutionalized in these segmentary societies as they were, for instance, in the centralized fondoms in the west of Cameroon (Geschiere 1997a). Men's authority rarely extended beyond the village level and was often contested; family members and other followers could, in the case of conflict or disagreement, decide to go their own way (and create their own group of followers). Those who attempted to gain wider influence on the basis of their personal traits or talents could lose their power as quickly as they gained it — even if they temporarily succeeded in causing upheaval, inducing internal movements, or increasing their group of followers. Domination was thus temporary, fluid, and often based on principles other than kinship. Groups were continuously reconstituted as a result.

As important as the interactions within the groups were those between lineages. Interclan relationships were characterized by conflicts, wars, raids, pacts, friendships, and alliances. These social dynamics led to what CopetRougier (1998) has called a "patchwork pattern of settlement" in which different groups lived and moved alongside each other. Intergroup relations, fed by the constant exchange of slaves and wives, also affected intragroup dynamics. The incorporation of nonrelated outsiders within the group made "belonging" a flexible affair, contingent on sociopolitical circumstances.

In the nineteenth century, this social organization was affected by two major external forces. First, the expansion of the northern Fulbe, whose Islamic jihad directed them southward from 1840 onward, resulted in increased military and trading contact between different clans. As the Fulbe's political dominance hinged on dependence, slave raids, and interethnic hostility, economic and political differentiations became more clearly established in the area. Those controlling the flow of slaves, products, and money were able to acquire a larger number of wives and followers than others. The subsequent development of big polygamous households and of permanent multiethnic agglomerations brought an end to the former mobile lifestyle that had reigned in the region. Meanwhile, the long-standing valuation of social relationships as an important source of power persisted and allowed these settlements to expand (Abega 2007; Billard 1961).

Second, the entry of colonizing forces in the region toward the end of the nineteenth century led, after some initial upheaval and displacement, to even more local stabilization and internal hierarchization. The Germans, and later the French, created fixed villages — an intervention called "regroupement" under the French mandate — that were made accessible and controllable through road connections; they appointed village chiefs who would function as intermediaries between the Europeans and the local people; and they constructed schools, hospitals, and agricultural centers in the communities (Geschiere 1982). All this happened around 1910 in the Gbigbil area, too. Colonial presence and "services" were most perceptible in the Gbigbil village of Ibudim, which therefore started to attract people from surrounding villages.

After a short period in which the annexed region seemed to flourish, the Gbigbil population was drastically reduced, with a yearly rate of -2.5 percent, from 1935 onward. Reasons were the massive rural exodus at the time, as well as the high child mortality and endemic diseases (such as malaria; leprosy; sleeping sickness; and syphilis, gonorrhea, and the resulting infertility) that ravaged the area (Billard 1961; Mengue 1982). Although both colonial regimes attempted to improve this sanitary and demographic situation, the eastern region of Cameroon in which the Gbigbil were located soon came to be represented as underpopulated and underdeveloped.

Although the area is currently still characterized by immense, sparsely populated natural terrains, the Gbigbil population increased again after 1967. This is exactly the year of the massive forced migrations from what are now called the anciens villages — or ilik in Gbigbil, meaning "what we have left behind" — to the new locations eleven kilometers westward, along a newly constructed road between Bertoua and Bélabo. Because of the low population density in the area and for administrative purposes, the postcolonial Cameroonian government forced separate residential units to merge into bigger agglomerations. In this way, two Gbigbil settlements (called Ibudim and Imanduka) that had previously led separate existences were now forcibly joined into the village I call Asung. The map of the current village construction, drawn by an informant, clearly shows the ordered way in which houses, churches, schools, the chefferie, and the health center have been constructed alongside the main road (see Figure 1).

This relocation did not happen without struggle or resistance. Villagers still remember how some were attracted by the promise of "development" and prosperity at the new location, while others hid on their fields and only gradually started to move their belongings from the old to the new settlements. Old compositions of, and relations between, villages and lineages were drastically changed. Former groups were joined together or torn apart and had to partition the new terrain that surrounded the paved road. This happened mainly on the basis of kinship principles, with different lineages receiving different plots of land. The inevitable frictions and fights that erupted around this division of land made several "brothers" decide to separate from the main group — just like in former times when conflict threatened the harmony of the group — and establish themselves with their families at some distance from the "center" of the village. Some created the hamlet Bitamien (an Ewondo word meaning "let us first try to see") that is presented at the left margins of Figure 1. Others founded the neighborhood of Akepa (named after the river in that area) ten kilometers from Asung.

Moving through Village Terrains

Although ultimately settled, the Gbigbil people in Asung still lead relatively mobile lives. On a daily basis, they move through various heterogeneous "terrains." Paramount is their work in the fields, situated either in the "backyard" or far away in the bush. Activities in these fields are contingent on the two dry and two wet seasons (isab and mbule) and are strongly gendered. Generally, men give a plot of land to their wives and facilitate the commencement of its exploitation by clearing the field through slash-and-burn methods. Afterward, women rather independently manage the production of corn, cassava, cocoyam, groundnuts, fruits, and vegetables. Much of women's social status in the village depends on the abundance of their agricultural yields, and on the richness of the meals they prepare with it for the children, men, and visitors in the compound. Men may complement these meals with game killed during their long hunting trips, which often involve days and nights of roaming through the forest. Such subsistence activities do, however, not suffice to satisfy other needs or to cover extra expenses. Money is needed for children's education (in Asung's kindergarten, primary school, or secondary school), hospital care, clothing, or bride-price transactions. Also, basic products such as soap, salt, or petrol to light the oil lamps at night need to be paid for — either in one of the three small village shops or at the weekly market where traders from northern Cameroon or Yaoundé offer these provisions at a lower price.

To meet these ends, both men and women engage in some income-generating activities. Many women capitalize on the production of their fields: they try to earn a little money by preparing and selling dishes "on the street" or by trading their surplus products. Some brew wines or whiskeys and sell them in or outside of their homes. Men also go to markets to sell hunted game or self-brewed matango and mbang mbang wines. While some older men used to own big cacao or coffee plantations around the old settlements, the considerable wealth and respect they formerly enjoyed has faded away since the devaluation of these products on the global market from the mid-1980s onward. Therefore, young men in particular now create their own fields or work on those of their wives to produce cash crops such as plantains, pineapples, bananas, and palm kernel. The income from these cash crops fluctuates heavily, though, and has become insecure in current times of economic crisis. The despair that inspired the violent riots in Yaoundé in 2008 was clearly felt in Asung as well and has not become any less ever since.

In these days of economic insecurity and political disengagement, where the only reality is just "le quotidien de chacun" (everyone's day-to-day experience), people have created mutual support groups in which they communally strategize and anticipate the future. In Asung, two official Groupements d'Initiatives Communes (GICs), initiated by the nongovernmental organization Plan International, assemble village women under the headings of "We search our lives" (Seying ining) and "The grain of cucumber" (Sol ngon). Further, many informal neighborhood associations unite neighbors for work in the fields, for mutual assistance in case of misfortune, or for weekly cotisations in which small amounts of money are saved and distributed.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Wasted Wombs"
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