Cameroon via Chelsea

The journey south from Cameroon’s Douala International Airport to Marguerite Akom’s home in one of Africa’s largest rainforests takes around seven hours in a 4x4. The final miles of red mud track slice through dense terrain where apes, orchids, liana vines and butterflies thrive in 35ºC temperatures and 80 per cent humidity. It was a journey that Akom made this time last year when she came to London to help create a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show and to raise awareness about the threats faced by indigenous people in sub-Saharan Africa.

Akom, 46, who is a pygmy from the Baka community, lives in a poto poto, or mud home, in the village of Cyrie. It is very different from the mongulu, or leaf house, in which she grew up. Back then her family lived deep in the forest as hunter-gatherers, until local officials persuaded them to swap their traditional life for a permanent community built along a track.

“It is the work of women to make mongulus from small lianas and marantaceae leaves,” says Akom. “It takes a few hours. We had everything we needed on site. The poto poto home can take several months. To be done fast, the owner may have to prepare food for those working and provide the locally brewed alcohol, called odontol.”

Akom’s home measures about 6m x 5m and has a living room and two bedrooms. Akom lives there with her six children – Angoula Felix, 21, Bella Anna, 18, Moudje Evelyne, 15, Loma Stephanie, 11, Papounda Jean Noel, 10, Yendji Wilfried, 5 – and her late husband’s cousin, plus various visitors who stay with her because her husband was a community leader. Due to her status in the community she, unlike many Baka, has a few plates and spoons – although she and her family usually eat with their hands around the fireplace inside the poto poto.

“Our staple meal is based on bush meat and forest spices, tubers and vegetables. Now it is difficult to have bush meat as there are so many poachers coming from the cities and taking advantage of the logging tracks for easy access to game. Once in a while we eat porcupine, deer, hare, duikers [antelopes], grasscutters, rats, pigs, antelope. It is more and more difficult to have elephant meat, which used to be a ceremonial meat,” says Akom.

Baka tend to hunt old, usually male, animals in order to preserve their food source, unlike poachers, who hunt indiscriminately.

“Life in the forest was very good,” says Akom. “When the hunting expedition was very successful we have enough food for a couple of days and sing and dance all night, chanting praises to Enjenqui, the god of the forest.

“Honey remains very precious to us. We have different types of honey collected from the forest. NGOs are now teaching us how to produce honey from our backyard. I still doubt the honey from hives will taste like the forest honey. Honey is very important as it is part of the wedding dowry.”

Fish, which used to be a staple, is becoming scarcer as mining and logging activities change the water table. Drinking water is often impossible to find. Women and children bring it from a stream 1km from the village. It is black or reddish and the Baka have no means of purifying it.

“Our problems are many,” says Akom. “We were the first inhabitants of the forest but do not have any rights there. Where we used to live in the forest has now been sold for logging and made into national parks and we are not allowed to go back and live there. This makes me sad.”

Mongulu-building is one of the traditional skills that keeps Akom and other women in touch with the forest and, more bizarrely, with the Chelsea Flower Show. Last year, she and two other pygmy women from Cameroon built a mongulu at the Green & Black’s rainforest garden to highlight the fact that hunter gatherers can be excellent guardians against activities such as illegal logging, if they are allowed to continue their traditional way of life.

The garden won a gold medal and a visit from the Queen who spent some time talking, through a translator, to Akom.

“The Queen is such a magnificent personality. If she was in Africa, or in my community, she would have been an equivalent of Enjenqui, the god of the forest,” she says. “Despite her grandeur, she is humble and dresses very simply. She represents a deity to the English people and for that I have a high respect for her.”

The meeting with the Queen and Akom’s presence at Chelsea have given her clout in Cameroon. She says: “This visit has empowered me and enabled me to position myself as a community resource person. Chelsea has helped organisations working with us to push forward our efforts to have our land rights recognised.”

“Since being at Chelsea we have seen small changes. The council has started extending forest fees and royalties to the Baka. What we want is our informed consent on all initiatives that affect us.”

If Chelsea impressed, English food did not. But London had its compensations. “My best moment in England was seeing how people of different colours live without discrimination. Even if you wore torn clothes no one made fun of you and people are instead ready to help. I was fascinated by my trip from here to England.

“The aeroplane trip was a mystery.”

Samuel Nnah Ndobe is project co-ordinator for the Cameroon charity Centre for Environment and Development. For more information, e-mail samnnah@yahoo.com

Jane Owen designed the Chelsea Flower Show garden that Marguerite Akom helped build in 2010. She is the editor of House & Home

Read more about the Chelsea Flower Show