I had several projects in mind but these would have to wait for Christmas. I knew only too well how awful it would be to sit alone in Dowayoland at that most depressing of calendrical rites, and had arranged with Jon and Jeannie to join them at the mission at N'gaoundere. Here we enjoyed a simple but refreshing Christmas, rather more religious than most of my markings of this event, but alternately restful and frenetic. Walter was at his most manic, throwing himself into the festival with an energy worthy of a better cause. Hangovers were liberally exchanged and we somehow contrived to forget that outside the snow was not deep and crisp and even. There were, of course, poignant moments. One sturdy expatriate burst into tears when ice-cream was produced; another was visibly moved by a Christmas cake with dried mangoes and bananas in it. I mysteriously developed an attack of malaria after exposure to flashing Christmas lights but was back, revictualled and revitalized after a week, to push forward the building of my house.

The dry season had now truly come and the land was becoming a parched wilderness of scrubby grass. The Dowayos also switched to a totally different lifestyle: agriculture had ceased until the next rains, except in the high mountains where irrigation was possible. The men would devote themselves to drinking, weaving and just sitting about, or to desultory hunting, the women would fish or make baskets and pots. Young men would go off to the cities in search of work and wickedness.

This was an extremely onerous task. At one moment the earth was too wet, a week later too dry. There was no barrel to put water in. The grass for the roof was not ready. The man who should be directing the job was ill, or on a visit, or wanted more money. The contract was renegotiated with lavish histrionics three times. Unless I paid more, I alone would be the cause of starving children, weeping wives, unhappy men. After several weeks of this I did what a Dowayo would have done and asked the Chief to convene a court at which my case would be arbitrated.

Dowayo courts were open to all, though women and boys would be well advised to remember their place before the elders. They would assemble beneath the tree in the public circle before the village and the palabre would begin. Each would state his grievances in high rhetorical style, witnesses would be called and questioned by anyone who felt like it. The Chief had no power to impose his verdict, but both parties were made well aware of public opinion and would often accept his mediation. The alternative was to take the case to Poli where it would be decided by outsiders and where there was a risk of being sentenced to prison for troubling the administrators.

Being inexperienced in the subtleties of language and procedure, I merely introduced the case myself in a speech Matthieu had rehearsed me in. It ended, "I am but a small child among the Dowayos. I give my case to Mayo who will explain it." This went down rather well and Mayo was able to depict my adversaries as heartless villains, taking advantage of my lack of kinsmen and my good nature to cheat me. Arguments went back and forth with myself rocking on my heels and muttering, "It is so. It is good," at regular intervals. Finally, I agreed to pay about twice the normal rate for the work and everyone was satisfied. It is important to note that in doing so I was not allowing myself to be cheated. A rich man expects to pay more for everything; it would be unfair if he refused to. With this in mind I did most of my purchasing through Matthieu. Doubtless he availed himself of the opportunity to take commission, but I still ended up a nett gainer. The result was that my fine house with attached garden and shady patio cost me £14.

A man claimed to have seen the boy enter the man's granary, but he was not present. The case was adjourned until his evidence could be heard. At the next session the boy and witness were present, the old man was not; anyway, the witness had seen nothing. At the next session an ordeal was proposed. The boy would pluck a stone from boiling water and the hand would be bound up; if after a week it had healed, he would be vindicated and entitled to compensation from the accuser. The old man refused to allow it. The boy now claimed compensation for the door of his hut. The old man denied breaking it; the boy had done it to spite him. Witnesses were called and again the matter was adjourned. At the next session the witnesses were there but neither of the litigants turned up. The case simply died on its feet. The two parties never seemed to bear each other any ill will.

Another case that day was typical of the functioning of Dowayo courts, The matter in hand was the dispute between an old man and a youth over a sack of millet. The man claimed that the boy had stolen the millet from his granary; the boy denied this. The old man had broken into the boy's hut to recover his goods and found only the sack which he identified as his. The two parties began to insult each other. This was too much for a Dowayo audience. Gleefully they joined in, shouting ever sillier insults: "You have a pointed anus." "Your wife's cunt smells like old fish." Finally everyone burst out laughing, including the litigants.

Anthropological works are full of accounts of how the fieldworker fails to "find acceptance" until one day he picks up a hoe and begins to dig himself a garden. This immediately opens all doors to him; he is "one of the local people". The Dowayos are not like that. They were always appalled when I attempted the smallest act of physical labour. Should I want to haul water, frail old ladies would insist on carrying the jar for me. When I tried to make a garden, Zuuldibo was horrified. Why should I wish to do such a thing? He himself never touched a hoe; he would find a man to do it for me. So I acquired a gardener. The man had a garden by the river and so would be able to grow vegetables throughout the dry season. He refused to discuss payment; I should decide afterwards whether the work had been well done and fix a reward. Dowayos often use this technique to oblige the patron to be generous. I gave him some seeds friends had sent me: tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and lettuce. He would plant a little of each and see what would grow.

The law court was regarded as a form of popular entertainment and Dowayos did not hesitate to use it for the most trivial matters. I only made one other appearance in a case brought by a local man against me.

I quite forgot about the matter until I received word in late January that my garden was ready and that I should visit it. It was an extremely hot day, even for the season, and fogged by heat-haze. The earth was scorched a dark brown and seamed with deep cracks. But there, after some two miles' trek into the bush, was a pocket of bright green. As we grew closer we could see that it was a series of terraces built into the river bank. It had obviously involved a great deal of work. The wet season would clearly wash it away so that the gardener would have to begin the whole enterprise again next year. The gardener appeared and insisted on watering the crop with great expenditure of effort and lavish gestures of brow-wiping just to make sure that the amount of labour involved in such a climate was not lost on me. He explained how he had collected black earth and goat droppings and transported them out to his plot, how he had watered the shoots lovingly three times a day and protected them from animals. It was true that the carrots had been eaten by locusts and that the onions had fallen prey to the cattle of nomadic Fulani, but he had protected the lettuce. There they stood, three thousand heads of lettuce, all planted on the same day and due to mature in about a week. All this, he explained with an expansive gesture, was mine! I must confess to being somewhat taken aback by my sudden emergence as lettuce king of North Cameroon. There was no possibility of beginning to cope with such an abundance of greenery. I did not even have any vinegar.

The case was rehearsed at length under the central tree. I stuck to my point that the crop was useless to me and that the gardener had never been asked to grow three thousand heads of lettuce but merely to try a little of each packet of various sorts of seed. My opponent stuck firmly to the point that he should be rewarded for all the work of the garden regardless. We repeated ourselves to the point of exhaustion. Finally the chief intervened; I should offer to pay 10,000 francs. Having learned the lesson that one should never agree too swiftly to anything, I hummed and haa'd and finally agreed, saying that I did not wish the gardener to be sad. The gardener reluctantly accepted, saying that he did not wish me to be sad, but said he would give me back half the money to show his pleasure at my generosity. So he ended up with the sum I had offered in the first place. Honour was satisfied all round, everyone seemed happy, but I was never quite sure I had understood what had been happening and no one seemed able to explain it to me.

In the next few weeks I ate more lettuce than anyone should ever be asked to. I supplied it to the mission; the bureaucrats of Poli feasted on it; bemused Dowayos received it as gifts and fed it to their goats as unfit for human consumption. I had tried to persuade the gardener to sell it in town but he met with scant success. In the end we fell out as to how much I should pay him. Since I had originally conceived of the garden as an economy measure that would add variety to my diet, I was more than a little disgruntled. I had offered the gardener 5,000 francs for the part of the crop I could eat. He could keep the rest and sell it in town. He had insisted on 20,000 francs and would not budge.

The case went to court and the lettuce grew, went to seed and rotted. Following Mayo's advice on correct legal procedure, I had supplied the chief with six bottles of beer to help him in his deliberations; my adversary would do likewise.

This gentleman was a young Bamileke, a dynamic and entrepreneurial tribe of the South-West sometimes referred to as "the Jews of Cameroon": wherever there is industry, profit and trade, they will be found. They are dominant in many of the professions and form the backbone of the teaching staff in the North, where they are posted as a form of national service to an underdeveloped area. The teacher had formed the habit of dropping by my hut in mid-morning for a cup of coffee during school break. His conversation would consist of variations on a single theme -- the horrific primitiveness of the North. "These people are like children," he explained. "You clean them up, dress them, teach them right from wrong and, of course, they find it hard. They cry. But afterwards they feel better for it. That's what we Southerners do in the North."

My involvement with the courts suggested the possibility that reports of law cases might provide useful historical background. I had read some of those published in old colonial periodicals while still in England and they had proved most informative. The only place where such material might be available was the sous-préfecture in Poli. I was curious to see the new sous-préfet and it would doubtless be politic to seek him out and introduce myself. I trekked into town in the company of the village schoolmaster.

The new sous-préfet was a small, dapper little man in Fulani robes with decorative scars cut deep into his cheeks. The Dowayos called him buuwiilo, "the Black White Man". Already a sense of change had come over the town. The administrative building was being repaired, the new palace was inhabited. In the market, traders were being obliged to use scales to sell goods and prices were displayed. Most astonishing of all, the road had been repaired and a regular bus service had begun with the cities. He was a new broom determined to sweep clean.

The Black White Man welcomed me cheerfully and we had a long chat about his plans for the area. He spoke excellent French and had travelled widely in Europe. He was determined to civilize the Dowayos, which meant turning them into Frenchmen, as he himself had been turned into a Frenchman. It was noticeable that when we were interrupted by Fulanis on business, he insisted on speaking French to them. He would be delighted to have someone look through the law reports for me; I could even take them away with me. I was amazed. Never before or since did I receive such co-operation from a government official.

He would expatiate for hours on the need to teach them how to think logically which, naturally, required that they learn French. Sometimes he would tell me stories of the fighting in the South against the French and calmly recount how he had aided in the murder of a white schoolteacher by his relatives -- all this as we sat quietly sipping coffee.

To a Westerner it is truly striking how many of the attitudes of Africans are those that have been discarded in the West. Any colonial administrator of the nineteen-forties would agree with the opinions of my Bamileke schoolteacher or Fulani sous-préfet, though the two Africans would doubtless reject the comparison. Faith in that ill-defined notion, "progress", the certainty that natives were characterized by stubbornness and ignorance and had to be forced into the present for their own good, tied them to those earnest imperialists.

We parted on the best of terms and he promised to come and look me up in my village as he was making a point of visiting every part of his territory to see for himself what was going on. I scarcely took that seriously, not expecting any official to venture away from the comforts of his residence; but I was wrong. He did indeed come and see me, and toured round the village asking some very sharp questions indeed. The Dowayos were terrified. The presence of a Fulani official was about as welcome as the visit of an ancestor. As he left, he indicated the village with an expression of beatific optimism: "Just think. In a few years all this will have given way before progress. Already things are getting better. Why, today I bought lettuce in the market. Someone has started growing it." I managed to mumble something noncommittal. It seemed a shame to crush such a rare bloom as faith in the future.

Not only the "good" parts of imperialism linger on; the "bad" parts are there too. The economic exploitation in the name of development and the crass racialism and brutality are typical components of the scene. They are doubtless as truly indigenously African as anything can be. There is no need to accept the romantic liberal's view that all that is good in Africa comes from native traditions, all that is bad from the legacy of imperialism. Even educated Africans find themselves unable to accept that it is possible to be both black and a racist, though they still possess what we would call slaves and spit on the floor to clean their mouths after uttering the mere name of the Dowayos. The double standard was neatly exemplified by one college student with whom I was discussing the massacre of whites in Zaire. It served them right, he maintained; they were racists. You could tell they were racists as they were all white. Did that mean that he would take a Dowayo woman as his wife? He looked at me as if I were insane. A Fulani could not marry a Dowayo. They were dogs, mere animals. What had that to do with racism?

The Fulani were eager to dissociate themselves from the negroid peoples surrounding them. They had heard of a South American people called the Bororo; this they connected with the name applied generally to the nomadic Fulani, the Mbororo. It was clear proof that Fulanis hailed from South America and had merely colonized these inferior races. Several young men offered me this theory worthy of a Thor Heyerdahl. It explained their light skin and long, non-frizzy hair, their straight noses and thin lips. They were often at great pains to point out that my exposed parts, brown from the sun, were the same colour as theirs, pale from wear.

The dry season development that most delighted the Dowayos was the arrival of my fridge. I had long sought to buy a paraffin refrigerator, regarding them wistfully in the city shops, but they cost more than I could afford and the difficulty of transporting them put the whole matter out of the question. In the abandoned house of the Dutch linguists who had worked on the language of the Dowayos there lingered such a machine. One day I had the good fortune to bump into them at N'gaoundere and they offered to lend it to me. I could not believe my luck; I should have cold water and fresh meat. My reliance on tinned food would be reduced; and some of the pressure on my finances would be relieved. I set it up outside my fine new house, the roof of which was just being completed. It was considered a great joke when I asked why they had left off the normal spikes that protect a house-dweller against witchcraft. Everyone knew that a white man was not subject to attacks from witchcraft just as everyone knew that he must live in a square, not a round house. My own house was consequently built square and, instead of witchcraft remedies, an empty beer bottle was placed on top.

To my great surprise, the boy arrived on the appointed day and Zuuldibo insisted on accompanying us. The trek was enlivened, as we approached the daunting mountains for the first time, by encounters with mountain dwellers. I was amused to note that the women here greeted me as their "lover". It was explained to me that this was a peculiarity of the area and much play was made of it. Having crossed the long, hot plains, dotted with salt-licks where wild beasts and cattle sought sustenance side by side, we began the climb. Temperatures at this time of year could be well over 110°F at noon, and both Matthieu and I were soon bathed in sweat. I had brought drinking water which he piously declined, but he was unable to avail himself of the only stream we passed since -- as I have mentioned -- highland water is forbidden to lowland Dowayos unless offered by a local resident. The Old Man's "son" turned out to be some sort of a cousin and was not empowered to make the offering. The path climbed steadily through patchy trees. At whatever time of year one travelled, it was at grave risk to life and limb. In the wet season one could hang on to vegetation while clambering up rock-faces, but the ground was covered with grass and occasionally one foot would simply shoot off into space as the path became a dotted line on the cliff wall. In the dry season one could see the surface and better place the feet, but there were no handholds to rectify a mistake.

This enabled me to re-establish contact with him and remind him of his promise that I might visit him. The trip was arranged for the following week. His son would come to guide us.

To celebrate, Jon and Jeannie came out and we drank cold beer with an ecstatic Zuuldibo. My "cold granary" was a source of great wonder to everyone. It baffled them -- as it rather did me -- how a fire in my "granary" made it cold. I could not resist the temptation of showing them ice, which none but the greatest sophisticates had previously encountered. They were terrified. Never having experienced such extreme temperature difference, Dowayos would insist that ice felt "hot"; if they touched it, it would burn them. I never fully convinced them that it was merely water in another form. Watching it melt in the sun, they would say, "The cold matter has gone away. Only the water inside is left." Even the Old Man of Kpan was obliged to come and see this wonder, in accordance with his role of keeper of arcane mysteries.

Finally, we emerged in a cool green valley, abundantly watered by a brook that seemed to flow from the very summit itself. At the bottom nestled a fairly large compound -- the home of the rainchief. We were greeted by a number of young women, wives of the Old Man, who clucked and fussed over us. Did we want to sit outside? -- inside? Would we eat? Would we take water or beer? Did we like drink cold like white men or warm like Do-wayos? The Old Man was in a distant field treating a sick woman; he would be brought. We sat for perhaps an hour, chatting and dozing and then word came that, when the messenger arrived to tell him of our coming, he found that the Old Man had already set off for Poli by another path. I was convinced that this was a put-up job but had to accept it with good grace. On the mountain Matthieu and I could not hope to catch up with even an aged montagnard; pursuit was therefore out of the question. Zuuldibo, who had been dozing, announced that he had dreamt that one of his cows was ill and would therefore have to return to check whether this was true or whether it was simply the spirit of an ancestor playing tricks on him. We were obliged to go back down the mountain.

We shared our journey with jibbering baboons who sent loose shale cascading down on us from above. Beneath was a sheer drop of three hundred feet or more to a river which hissed through granite boulders. We all laughed nervously when Zuuldibo remarked on his fear of falling as he did not know how to swim. After several hours' rough passage we came out on a plateau with fantastic views over the whole of Dowayoland and away towards Nigeria. Just when I thought it would be all plain sailing, the mountainside became fissured with deep clefts. Crossing these involved quite simply leaping across the chasm and clinging to the dirt on the other side until you had regained your balance.

This marked the beginning of my campaign to win over the rainchiefs and persuade them to share their secrets with me. All "experts" -- missionaries, administrators and the like -- were convinced that the stubborn unreasonableness of the Dowayos would ensure that I got nothing out of them. I confess that I thought so too.

However, I began a policy of visiting them all, one by one, of asking them to visit me when they passed through Kongle, and of shamelessly playing off one against the other. I pretended to the rainchief of Mango that I had only come to him in the hope that he might be able to tell me something about the real rainchief at Kpan. When I next saw the Old Man of Kpan, I confessed that I had erroneously once considered him to be a rainchief but had learned that he really knew little about it. Perhaps he could tell me, however, about what happened at Mango? Since these two were great rivals, the shaft hit home. On one occasion, when the Old Man of Kpan passed through Kongle, he was told that I had gone to Mango for two days. He finally broke, and I began a series of visits to him. On the first occasion he confessed that his father had been a rainchief and that he had asked around on my behalf and found out one or two very general points about the techniques involved. I was careful to be effusive in my thanks and to reward him generously even though my finances were once more in dire straits.

Over the next six months I trekked up his mountain six or seven times. Each time, he failed quite to live up to his promises, but told me just a little more. Each little detail he let slip I could use to talk to people from my village; they assumed that I knew more than I did and let slip a little more still. A golden opportunity came when Mayo developed a feud with the Old Man over non-payment of brideprice. He intoned a great denunciation of the rainchief and all his works, listing his past misdeeds, killing people with lightning, destroying fields with porcupines, etc. He was not afraid of the Old Man even if he caused a drought. He pointed out to me the various mountains involved in rainmaking, their differential importance and what sorts of stones caused various varieties of rain. By the time he and the Old Man were reconciled, I had a pretty good idea of the whole complex. It was crucial, however, to verify my information and try to witness the operations themselves since it was the focus of several areas of symbolism concerning sexuality and death.

Several events helped bring us together. The rainchief was mooted to be the man who had the magic plant called zepto that cured male impotence. This was in no way refuted by his own affliction by this complaint as noised abroad by his thirteen wives and confirmed in the private investigations conducted by my friend Augustin among the unsatisfied ladies of Dowayoland. The Old Man of Kpan asked me whether white men did not have roots to cure impotence. I replied that I had indeed heard of such things but could not say whether they worked. This reply pleased him greatly, marking me out as a "man of straight words". Through the offices of a sex-shop in London I managed to purchase a quantity of Ginseng in a lavishly illustrated bottle and gave it to him as all I could offer in this direction. The only upshot was a case of diarrhoea. He did not take this ill, however, agreeing that even the best remedies sometimes went wrong. He shook his head sagely, There are no remedies that make an old field new," he remarked.

Another incident that did much to cement our solidarity was an extraordinary visit by the new sous-préfet later in the year. As part of his modernization of the Dowayos, he came to announce that Dowayo cattle sacrifices must cease and that circumcision must be limited to the school holidays. A large party of officials and bureaucrats had driven out in a fleet of cars from Poli and held court under a huge tree. One after another, they gave impassioned speeches forbidding this or that. The Dowayos nodded solemnly and covertly grinned at one another. The Bamileke schoolteacher had prepared himself in advance for this visit, clearly having been tipped off by someone. He took the opportunity of denouncing the people of the village for their slothful and barbarous ways. For years they had promised him a new school but had put off building one. Whenever he returned after the holidays, he discovered that furniture and parts of the building had been removed. I shifted uneasily at this point, knowing that parts of my house had been previously incarnated in the sagging roof of his classroom. The Old Man of Kpan, crouching to one side, began to give me "significant" looks and nod towards the mountains. This was right at the end of the dry season and although there were clouds everywhere, no rain had as yet fallen. But there, over by the mountains, some eight or nine miles away, rain was falling. The sous-préfet began a long oration about the value of education. The people here should take advantage of it and their favoured status as an underdeveloped area. The rain drew nearer. The schoolmaster, encouraged by favour from on high, presented a list of the names of parents who had been keeping their children away. Here was a second list, containing the names of parents who sent their children with no other sustenance but the traditional midday food -- beer. The result was that the children were drunk all afternoon. At the moment he handed over the list, a squall of great power engulfed the entire party. Complaining and cursing, they all melted into their cars and disappeared back to town. We all fled to our huts. Both the rainchief and the schoolmaster ended up in mine and we drank coffee to warm ourselves up. "Did you see that?" cried the Bamileke. "These people! There are sorcerers here. Someone called that storm to stop me. These people won't be helped."

When the schoolmaster left I asked the Old Man whether he had made it rain. He turned on me a look like a cherubic tortoise. "But only God makes it rain." He collapsed in laughter, mightily pleased with the day's work. "But if you come and see me next week I'll show you how I help God."

By now, the rainmaker had told me most of what I was to learn about rainmaking. It depended ultimately on the possession of certain special stones, like those that maintained the fertility of cattle and plants. It was to be many months before I actually saw these in their secret cave up under the waterfall. Each time I was promised that next time it would happen. It was, alas, impossible on this occasion because it was still the dry season and to approach the stones might cause a flood, or because it was the wet season and we might be struck by lightning, or because one of the women was menstruating and thus dangerous to the stones. With thirteen wives around, there was hardly a time when one of them was not menstruating.

Matthieu muttered a simultaneous translation in Dowayo in the rainchief's ear. He and I chuckled. I had a long argument with the schoolmaster denying the possibility of anyone making it rain, the very existence of sorcerers, the impotence of magic; he defended all these beliefs earnestly. The rainchief sniggered more and more and finally became red in the face from hysteria.

For the time being, the rainchief showed me his portable rain kit. Once he had started the rainy season with the special stones on the mountain, he could cause localized downpours with the contents of a hollow goat's horn. He took me off into the bush and we crouched down behind a rock with much extravagant looking round and scanning of the horizon. Inside was a plug of ram's wool. "For clouds," he explained. Then came an iron ring. This served to localize the effect of the rain: if, for example, he were at a skull-festival, he would make it rain in the middle of the village until the people brought him beer. Next came the most powerful part of all. This was a great secret that he had never shown anybody. He bent forward earnestly and tipped up the horn. Slowly, there rolled forth into his hand a child's blue marble such as one might purchase anywhere. I made as if to pick it up. Horrified, he withdrew his hand: "It would kill you." I questioned him about it. Was it not from the land of the white men? Certainly not; it had come from the ancestors many thousands of years ago. How did this stone make it rain? You rubbed ram's grease on it. This was interesting, since human skulls also had to be rubbed with grease before being placed in the bush. I began to suspect that skulls, pots and stones were all related in a single complex. This in fact proved to be the case, the rainchiefs being the cross-over point from one area to another. Rainchiefs' skulls cause rain and are often replaced with water-jars for festivals, while the mountain on which the rainstones are kept is called "The crown of the boy's head". In other words, mountains are treated as if they were the "skulls of the earth". Once again, a single model centred on stones and skulls was being used to structure many areas and bring rainfall and human fertility into relationship with each other.

I thanked and rewarded the Old Man, and Matthieu and I descended the mountain in pensive silence. When I returned to the village my fine fridge had stopped working, spoiling several weeks' supply of meat. Hereafter it never worked properly again, seeming to know when I was not about to keep it in order. The moment my back was turned it would extinguish itself and simmer its contents to advanced putrescence in hours. Several times I returned to find Dowayos literally in tears before the "cold granary", weeping at the waste of food, unable to relight the apparatus but resolute that they could not touch the contents as they did not belong to them. I soon relegated it to the status of a mere cupboard. "West Africa wins again," declared Herbert Brown delightedly.

Up on the rainchief's mountain I had conceived a plan. Jon and Jeannie had offered me a lift to N'gaoundere the next day on a supplies trip so I could put it into practice at once. Stopping only to jettison my rotten meat and change my shirt, I set off for the mission. Three days later I was back in the rainchief's village. By a subtle combination of cajoling and bribery, I had weaned from Walter's children a single blue marble that I bore triumphantly back with me.

"Yes."

"I asked you if it was from the land of the white men."

"Is it the same as this one?" I handed him the marble. With a gasp he examined it against the light.

"You recall the stone you showed me?"

"Would this stone cause rain?"

He regarded me with amazement. "How can I know? I would have to try it, to see if it would work. I cannot tell you until I have seen it". He shook his head, clearly puzzled that I would expect him to make statements not founded upon direct experience.

It was not until my very last week in Dowayoland that I was finally allowed to visit the magic mountain itself. Having little time left, I felt that a final all-or-nothing attempt to prove the mysteries was in order. I announced that I would visit him on a certain day to say goodbye, glad to be making the perilous trip for the very last time. When we arrived the village was totally silent; the women had been sent away. We talked for a little while. Would my wives have sown my millet when I arrived back at my village? Did my father have many cattle? Would the rains have started? This was my cue. Matthieu had carefully rehearsed me in a little speech of thanks mingled with hurt reproach. I was grateful that he had talked to me but my heart was sad that I would return to the land of the white men without ever having seen the rainstones. This had to be put in rather a more ornate style to be acceptable in Dowayo. "It is like a little boy," I ad libbed, "walking with his father. His father says to him, 'Do not be tired. When we reach the mountains, I shall carry you.' But when they arrive there, the father does not keep his word. 'Do not be sad,' says the father, 'when we are half-way up, I shall carry you.' But when they reach this point, the father does not keep his word…" The Old Man took the point and clapped my little performance. He had guessed that I would be sad and had decided that I could be trusted not to repeat foolishly before women what I would see. We would go to the rainstones. Matthieu began to roll his eyes and begged me not to go: I should be killed. I reminded him that white men cannot be struck by lightning. The Old Man told me to take all my clothes off and he did likewise. He chewed up special plants. I recognized the aromatic smell of geelyo as he spat them all over me and rubbed them on my chest. I had to put on a penis sheath but as a concession to my "supple skin" was allowed to keep my boots on. I was warned not to talk or make sudden movements and to touch nothing. Off we went.

"It is the same. The clouds in it are darker."

"Yes."

We returned at breakneck speed, grateful for the comparative warmth of the valley, washed and dressed. The Old Man settled back in his hut. He had shown me everything. He had explained the various sorts of rain, how to make the rainbow by rubbing red ochre on a sickle and revealed the location of the rainpots. Was I happy? I was indeed very happy and rewarded him for his revelations. There was one thing more: I had not actually seen him make it rain. Would he now do so?

The slope was very steep and we slithered about on the loose rock. The Old Man was chuckling, obviously having a splendid time; I was somewhat less at my ease, being concerned for my camera and suffering much from the thorns that dotted the escarpment. Finally we arrived at a point just below the summit, at a height of two thousand metres. It was bitterly cold. A watercourse issued from above and beneath the icy spray was a hollow in the rock. Within were large, lumpy clay pots like waterjars; inside these were stones of various colours for male and female rain. The Old Man splashed them with the same remedies he had spat on me and held the rocks out for my inspection. There was one more thing. We splashed through the water to a large, white rock. This was the ultimate defence of the Dowayos. If he removed this the whole world would be flooded and all would be killed.

Matthieu and the rainchief were both cock-a-hoop about the tempest. I, of course, would never believe anything so against the grain of my own culture without much better evidence than this. I -- like they -- see what I expect to see. The anthropologist in the field is seldom troubled by the "false" beliefs of those about him; he simply puts them in brackets, sees how they all fit together and learns to live with them on a day-to-day basis.

The storm hit us at the very worst point of the descent where we were executing goat-like leaps across the fissures. Granite becomes very slippery when wet. At one point I was reduced to crawling on all fours. The Old Man was sniggering and pointing to the sky. Had I now seen? We were shouting above the storm to be heard. "That's enough," I cried, "you can make it stop." He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. "A man does not take a wife to divorce her the same day," he replied.

He smiled indulgently. Had I not seen the remedies he had splashed on the stones? It would rain between here and Poli. We should now go down the mountain before dark. Darkness did not bother him, of course, he remarked, hinting at his rumoured ability to turn into the nocturnal leopard.

I avenged myself by inquiring after the old Koma man who enjoyed her favours. Every tribe had someone to despise. For the Dowayos, the Koma fulfilled this very necessary function. A pagan tribe some thirty odd miles away across the river, the Koma were credited with a debased form of language by the Dowayos; they were savages who lived in incredible squalor, horribly primitive. Their ugliness was a standing joke among the Dowayos.

Mariyo was delighted by our dilapidated condition when we returned to Kongle. The renowned impotence of the rainchief and his possession of so many wives led her to draw certain conclusions about my eagerness to climb the mountain -- especially since the Old Man was so often away when I called. She had taken to calling me "my lover" after the fashion of the mountain women. As an alternative outlet for my baser passions, she had invented a fat Fulani woman I kept in Garoua with a ring through her nose. This huge Fulani woman assumed mythic proportions; she was so fat that she had to be transported on a truck; she was incapable of walking without leaning on servants. In the dry season, I and my kinsmen would sit in her shade.

Whenever I gave Mariyo a present I pretended that it had been left for her by her aged Koma, whom I had been able to understand very well as all his teeth had fallen out with age but he had led me to believe that this was in payment for sexual services. I described at length the costume of burial cloth she had made for him. Since he was so near death, they would not have to wrap his corpse but could tumble him directly into a grave in his outfit. On one occasion I captured a stick-insect and kept it for her, pretending I thought it was her shrivelled-up old Koma come to visit her. Whenever she looked tired, this was imputed to the efforts of her paramour when she went to fetch water; we both knew this was a mere excuse to rendezvous with her lover in the bush. These sessions did much to relieve the tedium of village life and were a major factor in the creation of such "acceptance" as was granted me by the Dowayos.

Being themselves sexually active, the Dowayos were truly baffled by my asexual life and the men would always ask me about it. How did I survive? Why did I not become ill? There are two basic models of sexual relations in Africa. In one, women are weakening and dangerous to a man, robbing him of his essential virility; in the other, his sexuality feeds on them. The more he fornicates, the stronger he becomes.

Rather to my surprise in view of their notions of male "closure" in the practice of circumcision, the Dowayos opted for the latter model. They found my ability to live without a wife truly mysterious and compared it to the habits of the Catholic fathers who lived asexually but in the company of nuns. The priests had wisely insisted on calling these not "sisters" -- since sisters are to Dowayos simply any woman of the same age -- but "mothers" with whom sexual relations are not permitted. The rumours of my vastly raunchy expeditions to the city were soon established and lent credence to Mariyo's jokes. Since one of my principal occupations on such trips was the search for spare parts for equipment that had fallen foul of pervasive African entropy, the expression "I'm going to the city for parts" rapidly acquired a salacious ring between Jon and myself. Alas, actual journeys bore little resemblance to these orgies of the collective imagination. Sexual encounters in Africa are so unromantic and brutish in their nature that they serve rather to increase the alienation of the fieldworker, not to moderate it, and are best avoided. I know from informal conversations with colleagues that such is not always the case. The sexual position of the fieldworker has undergone a radical revision in line with changes in the sexual mores of the West. Whereas in the colonial era other races were not permitted as sexual partners -- like those of different social class or religion -- nowadays lines are much less clear cut. It is astonishing how many lone females were able to wander around unmolested among "savage" peoples largely because, for the natives too, they did not figure on the sexual map. Nowadays, however, things have changed and the solitary female is almost required to engage in sexual relations with her people as part of new ideas of "being accepted". Any unaccompanied female who returns inexperienced tends to excite surprised and almost reproachful comment among fellow students. An opportunity for research has been neglected.

For the male, of course, passing opportunities arise and are often less awkward as being institutionalized on a commercial basis. This is a whole area -- like the ethnographic assistant -- that is absent from the anthropological literature but not the anthropological experience. The fieldworker may well decide that the whole thing is best avoided on the grounds of the huge complications it would cause in his domestic and personal life, but the problem must surely arise for all marooned for long periods in an alien culture. In my own case, being viewed by Dowayo men as having no sexual existence in the village was a considerable blessing; I was allowed all manner of freedoms that no Dowayo male would be permitted. For a man to be alone in a hut with a woman is normally taken as sure proof of flagrant adultery; but to imagine me fornicating with Dowayo maids was frankly farcical, and I for one was glad that this was so.

Problems about my precise nature and status also troubled the police. Matters came to a head towards the end of the dry season. Firstly, there was the incident of the irregular helicopter. A Swiss mission organization, vastly endowed with funds, had decided in its wisdom that the pagan montagnards could best be converted by a pastor descending upon them by helicopter in their remote fastnesses. Certainly the effects must have been dramatic. One day, when I was at the mission, this machine descended from on high and hovered above, emitting a loud bellowing noise: clearly it was the intention to summon someone to the local landing strip. Since I was the only one about who could drive, I borrowed a car and set off. The helicopter contained two rather bemused divines from N'gaoundere looking for Herbert Brown who had left that morning for N'gaoundere by road. They were trying to spot his car from the air. In a swirl of dust they were aloft and gone at precisely the moment when a truckload of gendarmes, armed to the teeth, turned up to arrest the "smugglers from Nigeria" that had been reported as landing. I was hauled out of the car. Where was their landing permit, their flight plan, pilot's licence? My protestations of baffled ignorance clearly cut little ice. I was unable to say precisely who was aboard or what they were doing, or give the registration number of the aircraft. My unwillingness to swear that the aircraft had never at any time been closer than ten miles to the border was taken as incontrovertible proof of smuggling activities. It took some time to disengage myself and re-establish my credentials as a harmless idiot.

No sooner had this blown over than there was more trouble. One evening I set off for the local hospital to visit a man from my village who had been bitten by a snake. My torch being defective, I soon got lost in the maze of footpaths that surrounded the town and was thankful, after half an hour's blundering around in total darkness, to see a light ahead. I made for it and was amazed to find myself behind the house of the sous-préfet's assistant. Pausing to explain myself to a lounging youth at the gate, I regained the main street.

Two days later, as I was working with the potters, Jon and Jeannie turned up in Kongle: the gendarmes had been round asking about me. An official-looking document summoned me to the police station for an identity check. Having assured myself that baking of the pots would not happen till the next day, I set off with them to town. The needle-chewing commandant took me to his office and we spent half an hour or so working out who I was and what precisely I was doing in Poli. This was accompanied by many hooded looks and significant stares. I began to be anxious.

It seemed that I was accused of taking a photograph of the back wall of the house where the sous-préfet's assistant lived. This constituted "strategic information". Witnesses had been found who swore that I had had a camera in my hand when found skulking around the house. How often did I go to Nigeria? My denials were brushed aside; there were witnesses. Did I know it was an offence to cross the border? I had been seen. This continued for some time until I was released with a stern warning that my behaviour would be watched. The obsession of Third World countries with spying is a constant menace to the fieldworker, only partly explicable by actual cases of research in sensitive areas being financed by interested parties. The real problem lay in my total inability to explain to someone who had no conception of pure research why a foreign government should be interested in an isolated tribe of mountain renegades. It was quite clear to the police chief that the only reasonable explanation lay in the nearness of the Nigerian border. Hence I was either a smuggler or a spy preparing the way for invasion. Quite what the value of a photograph of the back wall of the sous-préfet's assistant's house would have been in all this was never explained.

Only much later, when I came to know him better, did the sous-préfet tell me that he had been keeping an eye on things and would have protected me from his over-zealous gendarmes; he had regarded the whole thing as an enormous joke. At the time my own response was one of weary disquiet which was only increased by the fact that policemen suddenly started dropping unexpectedly at my village to check where I was. This event also coincided -- by chance or design -- with the loss of a batch of film I had posted in Poli. Jon, as ever, was a staunch support in these troubles and took me to the mission to pour beer into me until I felt better.