Second Day off

For our second day off in Bambui, we decided to take another trip to the neighbouring villages on our search for African crafts for the new reignite shop, which opens this Monday.

We found this old man who makes picnic baskets, it’s amazing what people make and it’s just sitting on a poll outside their house by the side of the road.

Then we continued to Fundong  (from around Bamenda) where we decided to see the palace. The previous Fundong Fon was famous for having 100 wives.. The palace is situated on the top of a mountain, a good strategic position but very difficult to access. Whilst we were climbing we encountered some villages herding cattle with horses, the horses were terrified of the car so we had to stop and pull over whilst the horses where dragged past. When we finally reached the palace we were met by a queen who asked if we had anything for the king… we had totally forgot so used the baskets we had brought earlier that day and then we bought some alcohol from the queen to put in. I also had to borrow a strip of fabric from the queen to use a skirt as I was wearing trousers which I couldn’t wear in front of the Fon.

The palace was amazing, really old and had lots of wooden carvings all over the place. We were taken to this courtyard to meet the Fon who was sitting down. He was very old at least 80-90 years old meaning he was probably the son of the Fon with 100 wives. He only spoke pigeon so we had to use one of his wives as a translator. He then invited us to sit down and share some food…. And hour and a half later we had something to eat. The whole time we were in silence, or near to it. It was a very strange experience sitting still for an unspecified time, at one point I thought there was smoke coming down but it was actually a cloud moving over the compound, as we were so high up. We finally left after a photograph, and a promise to tell our Fon we had met as they are old friends. He told us he would hit our king when he saw him as they were very old friends.