Cameroon Comes to Pittsburgh

It smells like Cameroon.  It looks like Cameroon.  It doesn't sound like Cameroon (with melodic and unforgettable birdcalls) but two out of three...  The Phipps Conservatory is calling this exhibit "Congo," just for the sake of greater name recognition.  But they got the trees, and the plants, and the crafts, and the inspiration all from Cameroon--that West African country where I spent five years, in the second half of the 1990s.  This grass-roofed pavilion is an approximation of the famous chief's palace at Bandjoun, in the West Province.

They had little displays of Bamileke art here and there.  This is an ancestor dressed in traditional beads.  Of course, the room was filled with vaguely recognizable plants that I recalled from years ago.  In fact, I spent two hours there, just smelling the old remembered vegetal aromas, feeling the steamy air, returning in my mind to a place I never fully left but which I so seldom revisit.  I don't dare call up the memories too often.  They were beautiful days, on the whole, but I was a drunken fool back then, and remembering brings me shame.

Dude!  Is that what I think it is?  No, it's just cassava, the staple of a Southern Cameroonian diet.  We always heard from disdainful expats that it was void of all nutritional content, but the Phipps claims that cassava is a great source of many minerals.

A scant and humble attempt at a Cameroonian rainforest canopy.  It's not perfect, but it actually does capture the overall contour and visual effect that I remember.  Ah, damn these memories!  You can stick them away in the attic of the mind, try to seal them off forever, but they're exactly where you left them.  The memories fade gradually, as the years pass, but their overall impression--like this Phipps version of an African jungle--remains faithful to the truth.  

These plants weren't even in the so-called Congo exhibit, but they too looked exactly like the Cameroon I remember.  In fact, I planted the colorful things (called "crotons") in front of my little bungalow in order to create a privacy screen.  I always felt as if I was on display over there, and I erected all sorts of barriers to hide myself away from prying eyes.  How is it that wealthy young Americans are allowed to take all their crazy out into the Third World and inflict it on well-meaning people who just want to live their lives in peace?

I named my bungalow "The House Behind the Mango Tree" because that's what it was.  There was no street and no house number--just a footpath--and my home was the Embassy's emergency evacuation point for Americans in the South Province.  In the grounds of that lovely place I had mangoes, avocados, bananas, guavas, and the trees pictured here, with their fruit: papayas.  (I actually think papaya tastes like baby vomit.  Don't ask.)  Papaya leaves are a powerful remedy for  various ailments.