First Knock Door

Doting your flower: Paying the bride-price among the Ewondo in Central Cameroon.

15 minutes

Cameroon 1999

Buea, the capital of Cameroon’s English speaking South West Province, is perched on the side of Mount Cameroon, a volcano and the largest mountain in West Africa. I had come to see the volcano erupting. But, apart from a red glow above the up-hill horizon, when the clouds cleared late in the evening, the eruption was not visible from town. So, I went and had a beer in a local bar and got talking to Victor and his friend Albert.

Are you a serious man?

When Victor found I had an Ewondo girlfriend from the Centre Province, he asked me if I was a serious man.

“If you are a serious man, you need to know how to dote your love,” he said. “I will tell you how to go see her father.”

The Ewondo live in the French speaking Centre province, so I asked, “How do you know about the Ewondo?”

“I had a love from there,” he told me. “You must be ready for what will happen. It is called the First Knock Door. When you go to see the father to ask for his daughter, you will say to the father, ‘You have a nice flower in the family that I love’.”

“The father will say: ‘I have so many girls here, I don’t know the one you really want’.

They will present you so many girls. And, the one you are looking for will not be among those they are presenting. And, they will start to show you one after the other. And, when all the girls are passed, you will tell the father that, ‘Among all the girls, I have not seen my love- the one I want’. And the father will say, ‘I don’t have any other daughters, I don’t know why you are disturbing me. You can go back to your country. You think I am a child, you can play with me!’ ”

“Then the mother will say, ‘There is another one child somewhere, I will go look for her. If that one is not the one you are looking for, I don’t think I have any other one in my compound’.”

“They will tell you that the roads leading to where that one is, is a very long distance and they need transport to go and bring their daughter. You issue them money to go where the daughter is, and when you give the mother the money to go look for that daughter she will tell you that her legs are bad, ‘I need some treatment before going’. You will give more money for the treatment. And they will go bring you a different girl- not the one you want.

Then you will be very angry.”

“The mother will say: ‘There is one other one- that is the final one’ and that they need another transport again. So now you will give them another money. Then they will go and bring you your wife. The face of the wife will be so covered and they will ask you, ‘is this the one you are looking for?’ ”

“You will say, ‘I want to open it’. You know her appearance, you know her structure very well.”

“You say, ‘That is my wife- I will just go and grip her’.”

“Then the father will sit down, and the father will be very angry. He will ask you, ‘Mr Man, this is the only daughter I have, now you want to take her away, I am dead’. He will pretend to fall fits- and they will give him some drinks- red wine- what you call in French ‘vin rouge’ 20 litres.”

“Gandia,” says Albert, naming the preferred brand.

“The girl will sit beside you and then you will call family heads and discuss the palaver and they will arrange a day that you people will come again. That is the first part, which is called ‘Knock door’. That is the first part- we have not yet finished.”

Victor told me, “This is how they do it for the Centre province, the Eton, the Ewondo, the Bulu.”

We ordered more beer, and Victor continued.

“You will give Green,” the second phase of it.

“Now you are going back to your father-in-law, with your wife. Arriving there the girl is no more your wife, she is now a child in that house, and no more your wife. The father will ask his daughter that, ‘We have never seen a white man in our country in our village- you refuse to marry a black man because you want a white man’. ”

“This will not happen to you,” I said.

“But I just want to let you know what will happen to you, to be alert.”

“The father will call the girl. He will ask the girl openly, in front of you, with those drinks that you brought the first time, ‘This is the food that this man has bring- and wine,’ and the father will say:

‘Let me eat and drink this wine because I don’t want something that if I eat the food of this man and drink his wine then tomorrow he will escape from marriage. And tell me really if you really love this man, because we are now in serious business. If you want him- this is the food and the wine. We have prepared it, go and give it to your husband.’

“Then the girl will take some food in a plate, bring it in front of you, put the food in your mouth; then you will also take some of the food, put it too in her mouth. Then there will be clapping on you, there will be cheering. Then she will take the wine and give it to you. Then you drink, (you drink small), and you will take it too and give it to her and she will drink too.”

The bar owner brought the new beers and asked, “I will just open it, eh?”

We still had some beer in our bottles, so Victor said, “Allow it, allow it” (leave it).

Victor returned to his description, “And then you will embrace your wife. The family will very happy about the whole show now- they will have confidence that you will have decided to get marriage. That is the second part of it.”

The list- part three

“We are now coming to the final phase- the dote. And this is what we call the third part

They will ask you so many things to bring. Now they will give you a list for what they want from you to buy and bring for that girl.” (That is the bride price).

“And then you will bring them. It will be a very big festival. People will eat and drink hard and dance. Before the dancing they will tell you to open the floor with your wife- you and your fiancée til dawn.”

Victor gave me an idea of what would be on the list:

5 bags of rice 4 big hens 5m of materials (cloth)

10 machetes 20 files (for the machetes) 5 jugs of vin rouge

“It costs one million,” he said. (Over a thousand pounds).

I asked, “If you don’t have the money to pay for these things, what can you do?” “You will not bring according to this list. You will not bring them according to what they ask you, but according to what you can afford.”

Albert added something on how to avoid the bride price: “You can bullet that girl, make her pregnant. Then you bullet her again.” Her father will ask, “Who pregnant you?”

The daughter will say, “It’s the one.”

“And you don’t have much problem.”

As we drank more beers, the conversation moved on from marriage. Victor is built like Sonny Liston and Eric says that he has many girl friends.

“I am annoyed of him. He told me he can’t change. He has more than twenty girlfriend. We went to the hotel, he has a girlfriend. We went to the house, he has a girlfriend. Now he goes to another girlfriend. That is not right.”

“I love so many,” said Victor.

“You don’t love, you like.”

“You can go out with so many girls”

Eric said, “To me it is not easy it is bad.”

“Get up early you will see.”

“He must tell the truth,” said Eric, “but it is bitter”

A record of a conversation in the Apollo bar in Buea on March 1999. I had been keeping notes of this conversation, but by now my wrist was sore, and I stopped writing.

Appendix

The list for my dote (translated from the French)

2 fat pigs 2 fat goats 100 kg rice 2 cartons tomatoes I bag of onions

4 bags of Maggi cubes 2 sacks of salt 20 litres of oil 5 palettes of fish

2 20 litre demijohns of red wine 12 cases of beer 10 litres of spirits

40 litres of palm wine 6 cases of soft drinks 1 bottle of rum

5 bottles of whiskey 5 cartons of Baron de Vallee wine 12 glasses

1 cork screw

For my father in law: A sofa set A dark suit and shoes

For my mothers in law: 40 sheets of corrugated iron roofing 2 large pots

1 double sided wool blanket 6 bolts of wax cloth

For Judith’s brothers: 5 machettes 5 files 1 radio for Balla 1 TV for Sidoine

This was the first list. A number of items for the bride’s sisters followed.