AFRICAN JEWEL .sx Dervla Murphy encounters the simple delights of rural Cameroon .sx In 1907 large areas of Cameroon had a more efficient postal and telegraphic service than was to be found in any area in 1987 .sx The German exploiters who had taken over in 1885 needed a reliable communications system ; today's Cameroonian peasants don't need one - though I daresay urban businessmen would find it quite useful .sx To the traveller this change seems not a deterioration but a comfortable settling back into pre-colonial ways .sx Granted it's tough on isolated missionaries and aid personnel who long to be able to contact friends and colleagues .sx But most of those I met were so enchanted by Cameroon that its technological limitations left them only mildly irritated .sx Nature , like the people , quickly reclaimed Cameroon .sx Coming to a river crossing in the middle of nowhere one may see , near the ford , traces of a massive bridge .sx Plainly the structures once had roads to match but of these no vestige remains .sx The jungle has long since restored the landscape to normal .sx In this corner of Africa the colonists ( German , French , British ) had come and gone within less than eight decades , a mere historical blip .sx However , the damage they did to the fabric of local society was , as usual , devastating and irreparable .sx The forced migration of thousands of highland men to work on the coastal plantations , and the recruitment of women and children to load-carry , undermined scores of regional cultures .sx Often the starving carriers had to raid villages for food and huge areas were reduced to chronic civil disorder .sx Not surprisingly , many non-elite Cameroonians still sound sceptical about the benefits of Westernization .sx Cameroon's juxtaposed topographical contrasts make it a trekkers' paradise .sx My daughter and I covered only 1100 miles yet our journey took us from the high green Grasslands , freezing cold at night , to low , parched , grey-brown plains where we sweated at all hours .sx And in between were eerie narrow river gorges lined with semi-rain forest , where one walks for hours under the tallest trees I have ever seen , through a moist , green - tinged twilight .sx Here everything looks and smells unfamiliar :sx berries , nuts , ferns , fungi , vines , mosses .sx These forests are uninhabited but one sometimes meets a solitary hunter , carrying a spear longer than himself and followed by a few hounds wearing belled collars .sx In the roadless , townless Mbabo mountains , many of the younger generation had never before encountered white people .sx Small children fled at our approach - then peered , fascinated , from within the safety of their compounds .sx It was different during the colonial period when European officials dutifully penetrated every corner of Cameroon ; some grandfathers proudly showed us dim photographs of their juvenile selves , hand in hand with a White Man on safari .sx The expatriates of today - generally a more effete breed - tend to restrict their travels to jeepable tracks .sx Before staying in a village , courtesy requires strangers to seek the Fon's or the Chief's permission .sx Often we were then invited to spend the night in the 'palace' , a larger than normal compound of mud huts .sx To pay for hospitality is of course taboo ; fortunately it is not taboo to pay lavishly for one's pack-horse's fodder or grazing , which costs almost nothing .sx No such payment is ever demanded , or even hinted at - but neither is it rejected .sx This ancient code , obliging villagers to provide food and shelter for travellers , makes it possible to sponge one's way all over West Africa .sx It sickened us to discover that many Western hitch-hikers do just that .sx A hot climate dictates that cleanliness must come next to ( if not before ) Godliness and each compound is swept with a grass broom once or twice a day , depending on the density of animal through-traffic .sx Comparing traditional Cameroonian villages with their counterparts on other continents , one realizes that in Cameroon - where the water supply may be even farther away - everybody works much harder at keeping clean their person , clothing , bedding and kitchen equipment .sx Outside of the untraditional cities , I cannot really recall seeing one unclean individual in three months .sx This puts Cameroonians at the opposite end of the spectrum from Tibetan peasants , who never wash and change their clothes only once a year - understandably .sx ( When we spent a winter in Baltistan , all our garments remained in situe , day and night , for three months ; and washing beyond our faces would have seemed like taking masochism a stage too far .sx ) Typically , in a compound at sunset , someone provided for each of us a wide basin of hot water ( both the water and the wood to heat it having been carried for miles ) , and offered a new cake of soap and a tiny towel , often frayed but always freshly laundered .sx The latrine was usually in a distant corner , behind raffia screen - a deep odourless hole criss-crossed by bamboo poles on which one squatted .sx Extreme anti-fly precautions are enforced , dishes being kept closely covered , even during a communal meal .sx This could be one reason why Cameroonian villagers , unless stricken by the ever-threatening malaria , look so radiantly healthy .sx Leaving aside the unappealing cities - Douala and Yaounde , which we ignored - there are two quite distinctive societies in Cameroon :sx the superficially Westernized small towns on the few motor roads , and the purely African villages - large and small - on the many tracks through the bush .sx The towns are ugly , squalid and cheerfully sleazy .sx The villages are beautiful , neat and cheerfully serene .sx Villagers regularly visit the nearest town , with a string of pack-donkeys , to buy and sell ; but they seem to feel no urge to compete with the town folk in architecture or possessions .sx In the remoter compounds a reincarnated Mungo Park would notice only one change :sx since the 18th century , brightly-coloured enamelware imported from Nigeria has replaced gourds and become an important status symbol and component of dowries .sx Much of our trek was through the high Grasslands :sx Fulani territory .sx The Fulanis - a proud , gracious people , Caucasoid in appearance - began to move into Northern Cameroon some 350 years ago and by 1800 had been converted to Islam .sx Many are shrewd and successful town merchants , distrusted in proportion to their prosperity .sx But the majority remain on the grasslands , indifferent to the cash economy though owning vast herds of superb cattle - the finest I have seen , anywhere , and representing a considerable fortune on the hoof .sx It is a Fulani characteristic , noticeable even in the rich merchants' homes , to live frugally , eating and dressing well but acquiring no unnecessary possessions - a way of life from which Western societies have much to learn .sx Often we camped , far from any human habitation , but occasionally our tracks crossed the motor road and we stayed in a hotel-cum-brothel where loud quarrels about payment disturbed the nocturnal peace at irregular intervals .sx In the pre-AIDS era I would have been diverted by Cameroon's prostitutes who obviously consider their profession not only old but honourable .sx Some are quite rich and therefore locally influential and respected ; we were introduced to them as one might be introduced in England to an enterprising young woman who had started her own business and become a pillar of the local Conservative Party .sx In the AIDS era , this social attitude is terrifying .sx The very word 'Africa' has recently come to suggest a Kaleidoscope of tragic or reprehensible images :sx drought , erosion , famine , AIDS , tribal warfare conducted with the latest inexpensive weaponry , pandemic corruption contributing to grotesque national debts , pretentious capital cities surrounded by disease-ridden shanty-towns .sx As yet , few of those images match our experience of Cameroon .sx There were of course some AIDS cases , noted by medical missionaries though unacknowledged by the government , and by now the virus must have spread .sx But the environmentally unaware traveller ( if such a creature exists ) might spend months in Cameroon all the time rejoicing to have found an abundantly fertile African country showing no signs of rural poverty or serious ill-health .sx ( Cameroon is the second richest , by far , of the Central African states ; only Congo is ahead .sx ) However , the danger signals are there , unrecognized by the majority .sx One of them is delightful and hard to think of as a menace ; yet the swarming children - happy , healthy , endearingly out-going - are precisely that .sx In the quarter century after Independence , the population doubled from four and a half to nine million - an estimated 60 per cent under 16 .sx Even half that rate of increase during the next quarter century will entail disaster .sx The awkward topic of my infertility ( " Why only one pickin ?sx " ) came up almost daily without its ever occurring to anybody that a personal decision might be involved .sx The few villagers who can grasp the idea of choosing to have only one child consider it grossly immoral .sx Or at least the men do ; some women , significantly ( and hopefully ) are more ambivalent on this matter .sx Near Mount Ocu , we came upon a scene that has haunted me ever since :sx the inexorable consequence of a 3.2 per cent annual population increase .sx For miles , in every direction , a section of one of Cameroon's few remaining primeval forests had just been murdered .sx The charred corpses of hundreds of mighty trees lay amidst the ashes of their precious jungle undergrowth .sx And next morning , following a night of heavy rain , we passed proof of the futility of such clearings .sx Above our track a steep mountain had recently been harnessed to cultivation , though not so recently as the previous day's arboreal graveyard .sx Already the new season's maize had been planted , but the rainstorm had ravaged the entire mountainside .sx Countless tons of squandered soil lay on our track , made still more poignant by a scattering of frail maize seedlings .sx Under forest , such a slope loses almost no soil through erosion ; under crops , it can lose from 200 to 400 tons per hectare each year .sx Inevitably we were impeded , at intervals , by African bureaucracy ; but African corruption passed us by .sx And this despite our once finding ourselves in an alarmingly awkward situation , having broken the law so seriously ( though accidentally ) that we might legitimately have been gaoled .sx The scene seemed to be set for bribery on a grand scale .sx Instead , the local police and officials invited us to their homes , entertained us lavishly , restored our confiscated passports after a not unreasonable delay and sent us on our way with enough food to last a week .sx To refer to 'the Cameroonians' as one would to the Irish or the Romanians is of course absurd .sx The modern state of Cameroon has all the standard nationalistic trimmings - flag , anthem , parliament , lines on the map - but is in fact a bewilderingly heterogeneous assembly of peoples speaking over 300 languages and ranging from the tall slender Muslim Fulania to the animist pygmies of the rain-forest .sx Approximately one third of the population is pagan , one-third Muslim , one-third Christian .sx This new country has no more reason than any other European-devised state to think of itself as a nation , yet it does hang together remarkably well .sx Is this , as was suggested to me by a Yaounde academic , because the Cameroonians have no sense of history ?sx If so , I hope they never acquire one .sx Northern Irland's all-Christian factions cannot come to terms , in the 1990s , with what happened in 1690 or 1798 .sx If the Cameroonians were similarly past-obsessed , the Bantus and Fulanis might have a very big problem .sx Cameroon has always been a one-party state , a more or less stable and benevolent dictatorship .sx Its human rights record falls far short of the Amnesty ideal - but not as far short as is common in Africa .sx The Big Men are quite openly corrupt ; according to the journal International News Hebdo , pounds1 .sx 3 billion were embezzled by 'public servants' between 1986 and 1990 - which prompted one Cameroonian journalist to describe his government as a 'kleptocracy .sx ' Sadly , the economy is now declining fast and young political activists are growing bolder in their demands for a multi-party system .sx Given a rapid fall in the average income , the public's fatalistic acceptance of mega - embezzlement is likely soon to change , producing tensions that cannot be without a tincture of tribalism .sx Cameroon has enjoyed a relatively stress-free post colonial childhood ; a more turbulent adolescence may be about to begin .sx