Why I never get too angry when someone is late

 Essentially it’s because sometimes they’ve been detained by the police (aka gendarmes around here – don’t expect me to try to explain the various jurisdictions of police/military/government officials. Suffice to say, if you’re not one of them you might get detained by any of them). This happened to be the case today when I went to Mbessa to meet with one of our farmers. The plan had been that we would spend some time together setting up a grass bund on the most severely slopped part of his coffee field. I’ve wanted to do this with a whole slew of farmers for a while as a form of erosion control and mid-April is about the earliest the rains are dependable enough to consider transplanting anything.

As I arrived at the man’s house I was a little apprehensive because I had not actually reconfirmed the date with him for more than a week. More than three days between the setting of an appointment and the actual appointment makes meeting someone a bit of a crapshoot. So when I saw that the door of his house was closed I went from excited to get to try a new method of erosion control (geeky, right?) to annoyed that I had just taken a 500F moto ride then walked for 45 minutes only to be stood up. So I hung around the house for about 30 minutes thinking someone might come back then left when no one did. After walking about 300m the man’s wife appeared over the top of a hill and signalled for me to wait. What she had to tell me was that the man had been taken to the brigade (where the gendarmes live) the night before and was being held there. Now, I’ve never been into a prison or holding cell here in Cameroon, but plenty of my American friends have (for visits, I don’t think I know any Americans that have been held themselves...) and their reputation is deplorable; not Soviet gulag or Abu Grahb bad, but really unpleasant. This news switches me from annoyed to concerned. Which is the reason I never get too angry when someone is late: because nothing makes you feel more like a jerk than to be miffed with someone for mildly inconveniencing you when it turns out they themselves are in dire straits*.

I’ve still never actually seen a holding cell because when I get to the brigade the man on duty

Outside the Mbessa Gendarmerie

brought the man out to meet me in the reception room. He looked fine, if a little shaken up, and reasonably happy to see me. He explained that he had been taken in because a child had gotten their leg caught in an animal trap he had set. I’m not sure if setting a trap of that sort is in and of itself illegal or the way or place he had done it was important and who knows if anyone could cite the law that had been broken, but none of that was all that important because what the Brigade Commander wanted above anything else was to have the victim’s father and the man who set the trap come to an agreement themselves over how to sort the situation out. Eventually, each party had an older family member present to argue (discuss?) their case and by the time I left (I couldn’t stay til the conclusion) it seemed like they were narrowing in on a figure that would cover the medical, travel, and some miscellaneous expenses.

Informal/traditional justice like this is pretty normal around here and even the secular authorities will commonly defer to it. The gendarmes did charge the man a small fee or penalty (they kept calling it bail, but after I asked a few questions it was made pretty clear that he would never see that money again and they refused to give a receipt for it), so they aren’t completely out of the game, but otherwise they were just present to act as mediators between the parties. So score one for the Cameroon government I guess...it feels weird to be writing a mostly positive article on this topic.

* For those who, like me, are constantly concerned about the ravages of erosion on a sloping landscape like Oku or Mbessa’s, we did reschedule a time to make those grass bunds for next Wednesday, so have no fear.