Mayos (pronounced MY-yoess) is a gorgeous 20 minute moto ride away on the old logging road to Batouri. The road is barely above one lane in size and is a great example of nature taking it back. I didn't really think about how close the jungle (besides vivid images of monkeys making off with my underwear from the clothesline...but that was before I moved here) really is. The road has a veritable wall of mutant yellow daisies at least 10 feet high. The road twists and turns and every now and then you pass some goats and children. At one point you go through a tree so big and heavy that when it fell across the road, they cut it and left the parts.
Mayos is actually a pygmy town. They're part of the Maka tribe. Jon's friend, Gladys, invited the two of us to join him and his brother for a cultural festival and soccer game that Guinness was sponsoring.
They had some traditional music and dancing. One thing that was pretty cool were the percussion instruments; they used hollowed out trees for drums mostly, but a few people used coolers and bidons (really big plastic water containers). The singing was led by an older woman and then a chorus would respond. The women were mostl wearing pagne and had grass brushes tied around their waists, so when they swung their hips, the grasses rustles and shook. The men had grass bunches tied at their ankles, knees, elbows and heads.
After the dance, the local team played against a team from Bertoua. It was a real David and Goliath situation. The players from Bertoua were all over 6' tall and the Maka are less than 5' tall. Guiness was sponsoring the match, because they were doing a program (for the World Cup, I think) about the most unlikely matches. They are also doing a contest to find "the best soccer player in Cameroon," who will get to go to the UK and hopefully get to try out for a football team there. It sounded like such a cool job.
I have to say that Jon and I had a funny reaction to seeing other blancs. Jon had told me that some Canadian missionaries lived in that village, but with their fancy film equipment, it was easy to see that they weren't missionaries. The first reaction is a blank stare and the mental question, "What the poop is this person doing here?" Then, if you're feeling friendly, you might ask them that question out loud (minus all swear words and their mature substitutes) and chat for a little bit. We did just that.
Oh! and the Maka won their match 3-2. So much for unlikely.
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