at least, the whisper goes so

today has a significance. we went down to the stream to wash clothes. it was far off so the only others around were two old men who were harvesting sand from the stream bed to sell to builders (but everyone here built their own house) and breaking rocks into gravel with hammers to sell to road crews, so as to pay their childrens' school fees; thus i am becoming reluctant to force the children to buy workbooks full of grammatical errors and vapid exercises which administrators getting perks from publishers advertise to the final solution of low standardised test scores (if you ask me it's because the tests are in english and english is not anyone's first, usually not even second language, they only speak it in school).

we discussed how if one were so inclined he or she could take a raft from the rock we sat on all the way into nigeria, though it would probably be easier and quicker to walk since you could always count on free cocoyams and a straw mat in villages on the way. this practice will not work in large cities. i was informed of a court case in yaounde concerning a houseguest who transformed herself into a rat and was caught in the act of poisoning her host's food by a thief. the owner didn't know the source of her rodent problem and set out poison, which the witch was relocating to the owner's own food supply. the thief felt it was more important to speak out than to finish thieving. as in all witchcraft cases, the courts have needlessly complicated the matter.

later on i was at the bar named for the canadians who come once a year and bring in about a year's worth of business in two weeks, where the owner was lamenting how no one buys beer anymore since they spent all their money on school fees. with a motorcycle he'd have a more reliable income, either transporting people or freshly killed forest animals such as palm vipers, bush pigs, antelope and chimpanzees. i objected to the idea of chimpanzees being hunted, noting that we were in one of the last countries (the last?) with forest chimpanzees. an elder who had been quiet so far began to speak on the matter.

through translation, i learned about the mythology of chimpanzees: a chimpanzee hunter knows that the chimpanzee is the most dangerous animal to hung, because if he shoots and misses (and he's loading homecast bullets to fire with black powder) the chimpanzee will seize the gun barrel as he tries to reload, drive it into the ground, and beat the man to death without any great effort. if he shoots a chimpanzee where other chimpanzees can see or hear, they will avenge the former's death, with their grip strong enough to break the bones in a man's arm. if a chimpanzee sees a hunger carrying a dead comrade, it will beat the man to death. but it is more complicated than this, for many hunters respect chimpanzees and come to the forest to hunt only the other animals. ch impanzees have a more complicated relationship with this type of hunter, as well as with the man who goes into teh forest for reasons other than hunting. if a hunter enters a nesting area with a gun, they are known to throw tree branches at him as a warning before there can be any confrontation. the chimpanzees try to befriend and imitate the behaviour of respectful hunters and nonhunters. if they notice a hunter going after a certain type of animnal, they will kill one and bring it to his camp if they get the chance. if they see a man smoking a cigarette, they will pick up the butt to smoke, and will do similarly with the last drops of a bottle of whisky. sensing my unrest about them being killed by hunters, the elder explained the traditional conservation method:

any hunter must gain permission from the chief responsible for a particular forest. the thief indicates an area where the hunter is allowed, then changes himself into a lion to drive the chimpanzees out of this area and out of danger. how the world must have been different...