Writing architecture: the mousgoum tolek and cultural self-fashioning at the new fin de siecle.

For the past three centuries the Mousgoum have made their home in the flood plains that straddle the border between northern Cameroon and Chad. The Mousgoum and their celebrated house, referred to in Munjuk as tolek (pl. tolekakay), (1) have been known in the West since at least the 1850s, when the German explorer Heinrich Barth journeyed to north and central Africa (Figs. 1-3).

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In one of the interviews which were the staple of my field research in the Mousgoum village of Pouss, Cameroon, my research assistant, Hamat Gring, invoked the author Amadou Hampate Ba's famous assertion, "In Africa, an elder who dies is a library that burns." He was talking to the late Azao Dogo, considered by many to be the village historian. Gring went on to ask, "If we do not know our elders, will our culture be on its knees?" The image raised by the discussion between Gring and Dogo vividly illustrates the fears surrounding the relationship between the past and the present as well as the belief that in order to survive in the present, one must know one's past. Gring's invocation of Ba presented a poignant, complex set of connections which highlight the central place of Mousgoum cultural knowledge in the construction of contemporary Mousgoum identities.

For the Mousgoum, as for many cultures around the globe, art and architecture have become important vehicles for sustaining--in tangible, visible forms--a knowledge of the past which is embedded in ideas about cultural heritage. In that sense, Ba's elder and the tolek have much in common. The Mousgoum tolek, a freestanding dome made of clay, was said to have been disappearing as early as the 1930s--through the combination of forced labor under French colonialism, Mousgoum emigration, changes in societal structures, illness, and death. Indeed, during my preliminary fieldwork in and around Pouss in 1994, I saw few tolekakay still standing.

However, since 1995 there has been a resurgence in the building of these houses. Nearly twenty new ones stand today in Pouss and its environs. Alongside this development, the end of 1995 saw a virtual explosion in wall painting, and much of this work depicts the tolek. Fundamentally, the contemporary revival of the tolek and its mural imagery shows how Mousgoum historical consciousness has been informed by their fear of irrevocable cultural loss, how they acutely understand the importance of the connection between architecture and cultural heritage, and how the tolek has been regarded by both the Cameroonian government and the West. At the end of the twentieth century, this structure has become a syncretic form--indigenous in its genesis and charged with a Mousgoum comprehension and interpretation of outside ideas. It is this crossroads of meaning at what I call "the new fin de siecle" that serves as the foundation for this examination of the murals on the facade of Lamido (Sultan) Mbang Yaya Oumar's palace (Fig. 4).

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The apotheosis of this inquiry is perhaps the celebration of the opening of the 1996 tourist season in Northern Cameroon, which took place in Pouss on December 30, 1995. It was, literally and symbolically, the meeting of the local and the national, the "traditional" and the "(post)modern," the past and the present, and the Mousgoum and the Western tourist. The celebration was a multilayered borderland where performance, art, and architecture expressed messages whose meanings differed depending upon the observer's position. For the Mousgoum it was a production and articulation of their cultural heritage, a celebration of Mousgoum agency which merged with the presence of outsiders. For the Western tourists who were brought in by the dozens, it was the opportunity to see the practices and images of an "authentic" African "tribe." For the Cameroonian officials it was an expression of a small part of what defines modern-day Cameroon. And for the itinerant researcher it was an incredible opportunity for analysis as well as an unbelievably lucky break. During this day-long celebration, the Mousgoum were defining themselves to both themselves and the outside world.

The process of defining oneself is relative, necessarily weaving the threads of the past and the present as well as the self and non-self into a unitary cloth. For the Mousgoum it is not only their own past but also that of the West that has figured in their contemporary self-representation. One of the threads in this cloth is Andre Gide's renowned 1925 journey to central Africa. Inarguably the best-known Westerner to visit the Mousgoum (whom he identifies as "Massa," a neighboring people), Gide wrote an extraordinary passage on the tolek that is the most often quoted text on the structure (Gide 1994 [1927]:217-18):

   The Massa's hut, it is true, resembles no other; but it is not strange, it
   is beautiful; and it is not its strangeness so much as its beauty that
   moves me. A beauty so perfect, so accomplished, that it seems natural. No
   ornament, no superfluity. The pure curve of its line, which is
   uninterrupted from base to summit, seems to have been arrived at
   mathematically, by ineluctable necessity; one instinctively realizes how
   exactly the resistance of the materials must have been calculated ... [its
   easy spring terminates] in the circular opening that alone gives light to
   the inside of the hut, in the manner of Agrippa's Pantheon. On the outside
   a number of regular flutings give life and accent to these geometrical
   forms and afford a foothold by which the summit of the hut ... can be
   reached; they enabled it to be built without the aid of scaffolding; this
   hut is made by hand like a vase; it is the work, not of a mason, but of a
   potter. Its colour is the very colour of the earth--a pinkish-grey clay,
   like the clay of which the old walls of Biskra are made.

The Mousgoum themselves have used Gide's description of the tolek in order to attract attention to their Cultural and Tourist Center (Fig. 5), and the French association Patrimoine sans Frontieres (Heritage without Borders) has also used the author's words in its brochures as a means of gaining financial support to rebuild tolekakay in and around Pouss (see "Mousgoum Cultural Center," 1995; "Reconstruction des cases-obus," 1995:2). Gide's passage is an extraordinary example of a Westerner's simultaneous identification with and disavowal of the "primitive" Other, achieved through the marriage of the languages of high modernism and primitivism. While Gide marvels at the tolek's technological sophistication and "classical" form, it is not, as would be the case with a Western edifice, the product of architectural genius (coded as European and male); rather it is that of potters, who for Gide can only imitate that which their ancestors had already been doing for centuries. Such a view implies not only that the tolek is "craft," as opposed to "architecture," but also that its makers, masons who are predominantly men, are somehow "female."

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Nevertheless, perhaps the attraction of this description for the Mousgoum is embedded in the ways outside factors affect one's perception of oneself. V. S. Naipaul articulates this idea in his novel A Bend in the River (1979:15):

   Small things can start us off in new ways of thinking, and I was started
   off by the postage stamps of our area. The British administration gave us
   beautiful stamps. These stamps depicted local scenes and local things;
   there was one called "Arab Dhow." It was as though, in those stamps, a
   foreigner had said, "This is what is most striking about this place."
   Without that stamp of the dhow I might have taken the dhows for granted. As
   it was, I learned to look at them. Whenever I saw them tied up at the
   waterfront I thought of them as something peculiar to our region, quaint,
   something the foreigner would remark on ...(2)

With respect to the Mousgoum and the formation of contemporary identities, the perspectives of those outside the culture--conveyed in texts as well as ephemera--become a powerful means of re-evaluating the self. Gide's passage reintroduces the tolek to the Mousgoum. In a broad sense it has played a part in making the house understood as the most extraordinary thing about Mousgoum country. And this understanding constitutes an important part of the structure's attraction for both the Mousgoum and the Western traveler (or scholar, as the case may be).

In 1993 the Cameroonian poet Baskouda Shelley wrote Kirdi est mon nom (Kirdi is my name), a volume that extols the unique natures of the twenty-six cultures--including the Mousgoum--formerly grouped together under the problematic term "Kirdi." Europeans applied that designation to the various peoples of the area who had not converted to Islam at the time of colonization. Although the term today has pejorative connotations for some, Shelley, who is from the region and identifies himself as Kirdi, has reappropriated it for his book.

A highly complex text, merging indigenous oral history and beliefs with French language, French literature, and Nietzchian philosophy, Kirdi est mon nom attempts to rectify through writing what its author sees as "a [Kirdi] world often superficially approached and profoundly misunderstood" (1993:5). (3) Shelley views his tome as half poetry and half coat of arms. The latter is especially important here. A coat of arms is usually defined as a design on a shield used as an emblem by a family, city, or institution. This emblem in turn is a symbol of identity, of a group's (or individual's) unique place in the world. It is with this understanding that Shelley frames his text, and invoking language as emblem, he seeks to "open a door into the immense and complex Kirdi universe" (p. 5). This universe exists through a series of twenty-six odes which create portraits of each of the Kirdi cultures.

Each ode opens with the standard greeting "Ephata! My people Ephata! Kirdi is my name," and then a more specific declaration of Kirdi identity: "I am--." The ode beginning "I am Mousgoum" (p.43) marks the commencement of a poetic history of this culture, starting with a myth of origin. In Shelley's account the Mousgoum were said to have come into being on the banks of the Logone as the result of a marriage between a Kotoko prince and a Massa woman.

After setting forth the myth of origin and Mousgoum perseverance in the face of adversity, the poet focuses on the relations between spouses and the way indigenous spirits aid in progeniture. The important issues here revolve around nobility and beauty. In addition to conjugal relations and connections to spirits, the author uses the cleanliness and proper ritual and eating habits of the Mousgoum as tools to construct an image of them that is noble and humane. Expanding on such tropes, Shelley then asks (p.45):

   Do you know my celebrated Mousgoum house which is in the form of a
      cylindrical obus? This house which displays the genius of Africa to the
      world? It is perfect, mathematically thought out, geometrically
      flawless. In the manner of the Pantheon of Agrippa, it exhibits a well
   formed curve. As a beautiful vase, it is built without scaffolding. From
   the base to the summit, it carries an earthen color without paint. In the
   interior, its smooth, lustrous, glazed walls offer with grace, A rare sweet
      coolness which chases the heat and replaces it ...

Although the references in this ode to the Mousgoum are practically identical to those in Gide's passage, rhetorically they are vastly different. Shelley, like Gide, connects beauty to technology and classical form. For the Kirdi poet, however, this connection becomes a source for celebrating the genius of the Mousgoum in particular and Africa in general. This genius is an integral part of Mousgoum identity, of what makes them unique among the twenty-six Kirdi cultures. In essence, Shelley has intervened in Gide's description of the tolek. He has rewritten it, reordering its semantic underpinnings to reveal the arbitrary and mutable nature of the tolek as sign. This reconfiguration gives the structure another signification, another underpinning ordered by a new voice. The dome, as a product of Mousgoum agency, now underscores the similarity between the role of the Mousgoum mason and that of the celebrated modemist architect. Moreover, Shelley's insistence on Mousgoum ownership of the tolek removes it from the otherworldly, ambiguous territory of "nonpedigreed" architecture, de-exoticizes it, and places it within its own historical as well as contemporary cultural contexts.

In his foreword, Shelley (pp.6,9), invoking Aime Cesaire (1983), uses castration as a metaphor for oppression and psychological slavery. In tandem with a reconstitution of the self, an operation Cesaire describes as "de-castration," the exaltation of genius enables psychic restoration. By invoking the tolek as the display of genius and indigenous agency, the structure becomes not only a marker but also an aggressive symbol of contemporary identity, metaphorically and literally built through what Charles Binam Bikoi calls "the mastery of the verb." This notion, for Bikoi, underscores the active transmission of history and cultural values through oral means (1985:92).

Moreover, the Mousgoum structure squarely confronts ingrained myths which insist upon African inferiority. Here, the deployment of the tolek serves as an integral part of an African reference point in the operation of self-evaluation and reconstruction. Abiola Irele explains this process with respect to the ways in which African reference points, put into the service of self-exploration, first constitute a polemic, a counternarrative fundamentally opposed to imperialist ideology. In this action, the tolek allows the articulation of a cultural identity, one that is steeped in what Irele calls "counteracculturation." This identity exists in opposition to imperialist ideology, simultaneously striving to divest it of its symbolic and psychic force (Irele 1986:124-25). Hence this new symbol which helps Shelley reach an empowering catharsis, proclaims the two words that mark the completion of Shelley's--as well as the Kirdi's--healing process: "Homo sum" (p.82).

Tourism and Self-Reinvention

Dean MacCannell has convincingly argued, "Tourism today occupies the gap between primitive and modern, routinely placing modernized and primitive peoples in direct face-to-face interaction ..." (1992:17). This interaction occurs in Pouss on an almost daily basis. Western tourists--led there by travel stories, travelogues, advertising, and images on ephemera such as postage stamps (Fig. 6)--arrive to see the tolekakay, visit Lamido Mbang Yaya Oumar, wander through the market, and go on "hippo watches" on the neighboring Logone or Lake Maga. After this brief sojourn, the travelers return to the Coca-Colas and Fanta sodas which await them in the well-equipped minivan, and drive the sixty or so miles back to the city of Maroua, satisfied that Pouss and its environs are exactly as the travel guides had said they would be. While MacCannell rigorously explains and analyzes the often exploitative encounter between the tourist and what he calls the "ex-primitive," his account ignores the fact that while the exprimitive is, in a large sense, putting on a performance predicated on Western perception and desire, it is possible that in the performance of dances, the staging of festivals, the construction of new tolekakay, and the appearance of figural wall painting, there is a rewriting of history not only for Westerners but also for the Mousgoum themselves. This oversight in MacCannell's analysis robs non-Westerners of their agency and obscures the fact that many of these encounters have multiple layers of meaning.

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Paul Lane, in his work on the Dogon of Mali, notes, "Despite a history of colonial administration, and, more lately, growing tourist activity, it would

be entirely inappropriate to regard all these changes as comparable parts of Westernization." Within this framework, he writes that indigenous responses are viewed "at worst as ... passive reception and at best as opportunistic adaptation to events beyond the control of local inhabitants" (1988:66; see also Van Beek 1991:56-73). MacCannell's overemphasis on outside forces of change in non-Western cultures and his failure to seriously consider indigenous agency cause his analysis to come dangerously close to reinscribing the very tropes that he seeks to deconstruct.

Stephen Greenblatt has recognized the danger in such thinking about the meeting of non-Western and Western cultures. In his exploration of Europeans in the New World (1991), he begins by noting his experience as a Western tourist to the island of Bali, witnessing the assimilation of Western technology by a group of local residents. He found that the VCR and the television monitor had become a powerful alternative means of self-representation. Greenblatt then emphasizes the need to "resist what we may call an a priori ideological determinism, that is, the notion that particular modes of representation are inherently and necessarily bound to a given culture, and that their effects are unidirectional" (1991:3-4). For Greenblatt it is important to acknowledge that people have powerful mechanisms for assimilating and recasting things from within and without (1991:4). His encounter also shows that the assimilation of things foreign serves at once those inside and outside a culture. In this vein, the reappropriation of the tolek and its representation by the Mousgoum have been neither passive responses to outside forces nor opportunistic means of accumulating wealth at the expense of the Western tourist: they are instead an active, powerful way of reinventing themselves for themselves.

Moreover, in many regions of sub-Saharan Africa, the "gap" between the traditional and the modern has its genesis not only in tourism but also in traces of colonialism, in religious conversion, and in the connection of contemporary Africa to a global economy. Within all of these factors, as well as the complexities surrounding the formation of national identities, many African cultures have sought to refashion themselves so that the past and the present are not in complete opposition to one another. Shelley's text is a dramatic form of this fashioning of the self showing the self as having multiple reference points and constructing a modern Mousgoum (and African) person as a sentient, rational being who has a syncretic world-view. This self-fashioning has resonance in the architectural and visual realms as well.

The Palace Mural Decoration

When one comes to Pouss, one can easily find the palace of Lamido Mbang Yaya Oumar. His residence dwarfs those around it, and vivid paintings on its facade emphasize the centrality of the entrance. The palace was first painted in the early 1990s, but it was repainted in December 1995 in preparation for the aforementioned celebration marking the opening of the tourist season. The task was accomplished by communities of women. Grouped by their neighborhoods, they were each given an area to paint. Groups from the eastern side of Pouss had the wall to the right of the entrance; those from Pouss Center (the area abutting the square in front of the palace) had the entrance, its immediate vicinity, and interior court; and those from the western side of Pouss, the wall to the left of the entrance. Each woman was paid about 200 Central African francs (about 40 cents).

The tolek is depicted on both sides of the palace's entrance, among an array of representational and abstract images. Shelley celebrated the color of the house as being the same as that of the ground, but the tolekakay on the Lamido's palace are a pastiche of colorful contrasts in paint and low relief in clay. As with the Western representations of the tolek, much attention is given to the pattern of its outer walls; however, these bas-relief multicolored ovals give the houses a tactility and sumptuousness lacking in Western descriptions and images. As in Shelley's ode, the reappropriation of the tolek transforms it into a sign which undeniably attests to the desire of Mousgoums to portray their culture as vital and contemporary, and the position of the houses on both sides of the entrance calls attention to the ruler's power and wealth. The capacity of the tolek to relay such qualities is emphasized in the image on the Lamido's official stamp, where the house appears under two swords (Fig. 7). This pictogram identifies the Lamido and his dominion. The words "SULTAN MBANG YAYA OUMAR /CANTON POUSS, MAGA" appear within the surrounding ring. Working as part of the frame itself, the written name of the Lamido and the place ground the tolek within the Mousgoum vocabulary of royal power.

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The sultan's brother and spokesperson, Salman Mbang Oumar, called the tolek the Mousgoum "symbol of tradition," adding that it is the "card of identity of the Mousgoum." This view of the house as a cultural symbol was indeed echoed by many people in and around Pouss. (4) Ousman Assoua was very explicit about such a connection, insisting: "The appearance of the tolek, [a] symbol of Mousgoum culture which is nearly lost, on the wall of the Lamido not only stirs the curiosity of the Mousgoum but also [attracts] the attention of tourists for the sake of joy." Evele Douniya contended that the construction of the new tolekakay articulates "the memory of the past." These connections are also found pictorially on the wall of Mme. Boukar Patcha Alouakou's house, where the word symbole is written above a drawing of a tolek (Fig. 8). She states, "I have revived or drawn the tolek on my wall because it is something from [our] tradition which is in the process of disappearing." As these references reveal, the tolek's reappropriation and reinterpretation recall a Mousgoum past whose symbolic import is very much a part of the present.

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When I interviewed the Lamido in 1995, he elaborated even further in his description of the tolek comparing it to writing. He also claimed that the Mousgoum are a people who "appeared on the earth several millions of years ago," and then added, "They are a people who come from the Sudan; [they are] a civilized people because of having built the tolek" (emphasis mine). In these statements, the Lamido consciously attaches the tolek to his own ideas of civilization, and within this connection places emphasis upon Mousgoum ingenuity and agency, reminding us once again of Bikoi's "mastery of the verb." In his novel No Longer at Ease (1988:275-76), the celebrated Nigerian author Chinua Achebe wrote:

   And the symbol of the white man's power was the written word, or better
   still, the printed word. Once before he went to England, Obi heard his
   father talk with deep feeling about the mystery of the printed word to an
   illiterate kinsman: Our women made black patterns on their bodies with the
   juice of the uli tree ... but it soon faded.... But sometimes our elders
   spoke about uli that never faded, although no one had ever seen it. We see
   it today in the writing of the white man. If you go to the native court and
   look at the books which clerks wrote twenty years ago or more, they are
   still as they wrote them. They do not say one thing today and another
   tomorrow, or one thing this year and another next year.... In the Bible,
   Pilate said, `What is written is written.' It is the uli that never fades.
   (5)

In these conscious connections of African visual art forms to writing--indeed, these forms as writing--the Lamido and Achebe each reveal a perception of civilization and power rooted in the written word, and for the Mousgoum this connection is part of the way the tolek becomes both product and symbol of not only the Mousgoum civilization in particular but also the very idea of civilization in general.

Writing has many other meanings with respect to the construction of the self that are steeped in different ideas of "culture" as well as civilization. In a framework largely dictated by Hegelian notions of civilization and the self, writing--and, by extension, the book--became understood as the ultimate tool which Africans could deploy to eradicate the intellectual and cultural alienation resulting from the colonizer's denial of the particularities of African cultures and, moreover, of the colonizer's wholesale negation of African humanity. It is in this spirit that the Cameroonian scholar Andre-Marie Ntsobe passionately insists (1985:234-35):

   The book is the universal word, the word of the man of culture. It offers
   him the ultimate privilege of becoming aware of the weakness of what has
   been said in the past, its contradictions and even its contingency. It
   enables him to have a history of vast dimensions, a definitive structure of
   his social organization, to take charge of his life and fix it in an
   immutable form. The new language permits him to formulate his ultimate
   goals explicitly, it is the liberating word, an [eruption] into the world
   and history.... By consigning their knowledge to the printed page they
   counteract the alienation of Cameroonians ... Hence the book is a sacred
   heritage, since it is a means for Cameroon to conserve its cultural
   characteristics, a means of expression for restoring fullness and meaning
   to its culture, since it crystallizes the riches of the centuries. (6)

The many issues articulated by Ntsobe also find expression in the provocative analogy the Lamido draws between the tolek and writing. It is explicitly that which, like the work of Shelley, connects the Mousgoum to history, civilization, and full personhood. Herbert Cole (1989:155) also addresses the link between art and writing in Africa, expounding on the importance of the word in showing the literacy of artists and rulers. According to him, the power of the word amplifies the ruler's authority and prestige. The tolek, as structure and as representation in painting, like Achebe's written word and Ntsobe's books, assumes a position of permanence tantamount to both a declaration of civilization and a resume of history for the Mousgoum people.

Lamido Mbang Yaya Oumar is not only the political leader of the Sultanate of Pouss but also the spiritual leader of its Muslims. The Sultanate itself converted to Islam by the turn of the twentieth century under the influence and domination of the Bagirmi who live in Chad (Lembezat 1961:67; see also Goodhue 1995:3). By the 1930s and '40s a large proportion of its subjects had converted as well. The crescent moon and star--one of the paradigmatic signs of Islamic affiliation as well as an allusion to beginnings and endings--also appear on the facade of the palace, overtly showing the paramount importance of Islam as part of the Lamido's identity. This symbol works with the other images to construct the representation of his power and dominion.

The symbols on the Lamido's wall point to the spiritual dimension of both his person and his power, which derive from his being seen by Muslims as the earthly representative of the Prophet, a characterization that legitimates his rule. Here the crescent and star bear a striking symbolic resemblance to the turban of the ruler. As one hadith said, "... as long as the Islamic community wears the turban, it will not go astray" (in Nasr 1993:112). (7) Hence the spirituality of the cloth serves as a metaphor for the spirituality of the Sultanate. The images on the wall articulate the same message.

However, the turban finds analogies not only in the symbol of the crescent and star but also in the tolek and its image on the palace wall. As is the case with many architectural forms throughout the world, the parts of the tolek can be likened to parts of the human body, and within this framework the head takes on paramount significance. The covering for the hole at the top of the tolek is called a "straw hat" (gidigilik). The architectural metaphors it engenders easily accommodate and assimilate Islamic practices and beliefs. As such, the importance of the turban in dress and the head in Mousgoum architecture creates a milieu in which the tolekakay on the Lamido's facade articulate similar values in political and spiritual realms. The multicolored representations of the tolek work along with this. The combination of the white background with the colored aziy, or "feet," of the house on the left finds its metaphor in the Mousgoum fantasia (Fig. 9). In both cases, the contrast of white and color serves to highlight the power and importance of the ruler.

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The ability of the tolek to become a reflection of the present as well as a mnemonic key to the past is reinforced by other paintings on the palace facade, such as the images of the airplane and the map of Cameroon. With respect to the Western veneration of the tolek and the move throughout Cameroon to develop tourism, the airplane serves to represent contemporary industry and modern transit.

The image of the airplane appears frequently in developing countries as a symbol of modernity. It would be shortsighted, however, to see it merely as such. Susan Vogel convincingly argues that images of airplanes, Mercedes-Benzes, and the like in contemporary African art can at times be understood as both "traditional" and "modern." In the case of the late Ghanaian artist Kane Kwei, who created Airplane-Shaped Coffin in 1989 (Fig. 10), she stresses that the artist's work "permits his patrons to uphold traditional values publicly through a conspicuously untraditional means" (1991:100).

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If we consider the airplane on the Lamido's wall together with his own ceremonial appearances on an elaborately outfitted horse, as well as the representation of the horse on the earlier and present facades, we can then see these two mural images as striking metaphors for the ruler. Cole emphasizes how the horse underscores the superiority of rulers, helping to fashion them as "aggrandized, forceful males." He suggests that they are "faster, richer, more visually and psychologically impressive, and thus in a more commanding position to lead" (1989:116). Cole then draws analogies to wheeled vehicles and their capacity to signify similar ideas of wealth and prestige. The airplane calls to mind the same analogy. While this means of transport speaks to the present as a symbol of tourism, or indeed "modernity" itself, it is multifaceted, addressing at once the Lamido's cosmopolitanism and his superiority and ability to rule his subjects.

Perhaps the facade's most obvious image suggestive of contemporary life and identity is the map and flag of Cameroon. On an earlier facade, a dot with a leader line showing the location of the Mousgoum--specifically the Sultanate of Pouss--within the modern nation-state illustrated a Mousgoum concern with connecting themselves to a larger political entity and showing their allegiance to it (Fig. 11). As Mme. Elhadj Abdramane said about the Cameroonian flag on her own wall, "The flag is [there] because I am in my country" (Fig. 12). The idea of Cameroon as a unified polity is rooted in the nationalist movements for independence which developed throughout the African continent during the 1950s and 1960s. Cameroon gained independence in 1960, and creating a unified national identity in a country containing over one hundred different cultures is still quite a contested issue. (8) The 1,000 Central African franc (CFA) note (Fig. 13) is an example of how the Cameroonian government has used the tolek to further this process. Considering that many of today's Mousgoum live in Chad, their alignment with Mousgoum in Cameroon shows how, in postcolonial Africa, formerly arbitrary boundaries have helped constitute contemporary identities which are considered both viable and "real." In the case of the Lamido's wall as in Shelley's work, there are multiple reference points: here they not only are ethnic and national but also connect to colonial and Western perception.

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In this vein as well, the depiction of the map of Cameroon brings to the fore the relationship between the national government and the Sultanate of Pouss. In many regions of Cameroon, particularly the north, the nation-state allows many local chiefs to maintain their powers in their historical regions. In Pouss the power structure defined by the Lamido and his guards has remained largely intact. People often go to the Lamido--as opposed to Cameroonian governmental authorities--in order to resolve their disputes. In many respects the government has allowed the northern sultanates to apply their own laws in their dominions, and in return the leaders of these ministates lend their support to national governmental structures. (9) Images of the map and flag allude to this reciprocity. We see not only an articulation of the Sultanate's literal position within Cameroon but also a symbol of the connectedness of local and national power.

Other depictions on the wall suggest how fully the image of the Lamido in particular and the cultural identity of the Mousgoum more generally has been constituted here. Immediately to the right of the tolekakay, the airplane, the map, and the crescent and star, one finds representations of a lion, a teapot, and a giraffe eating the leaves from the top of a tree. These latter portrayals elucidate and amplify important qualities of the tolek as well as important aspects of Mousgoum life.

In Mousgoum country, teapots are a staple of many homes. Certain ones are reserved for performing ritual ablution before prayer: others are used for entertaining guests. A meeting of friends or associates at a home or the market will often involve the sharing of tea. Through this act, old bonds are reaffirmed and new ones are made. During my own stay in Pouss, the sharing of tea became one of the main ways I was able to extend friendship, respect, and appreciation to my Mousgoum family, friends, and associates. Embedded in this activity are tropes of good will and the social importance of "home." On the facade, the position of the teapot between the tolek and the giraffe and tree creates an idea of "home" that is not only the house but also the land, or perhaps more appropriately, all of Mousgoum country. This narrative of "home," however, expresses more than affiliation and belonging; it also declares ownership. As the late Abdoulaye Malbourg insisted, the things on the palace facade are those "which belong to the Mousgoum."

The animal images, too, evoke narratives of home and the self. They also appear, imbued with human attributes, in myths and fables, making them key agents in the teaching of indigenous manners and codes of behavior. They also play integral roles in stories that explain the world. The centrality of animals, for Salman Mbang Oumar, lies in the fact that in stories and myth, "the Mousgoum ... can make animals and things speak and give them a description which is believed to be true."

The depiction of two men fishing to the left of the entrance, past the crescent and star, illustrates one of the primary occupations of the Mousgoum, an activity of the past that continues into the present day (Fig. 14). This image of industriousness--echoed in various forms on walls throughout the village--also underscores indigenous agency. Here, male agency is represented as one of the things that insures collective and familial well-being. This idea of well-being, couched in ideas of heritage and progeniture, is echoed by the appearance of a pot--an item made by women--on the wall (Fig. 15).

[FIGURES 14-15 OMITTED]

In a related context, some of the seemingly abstract images on the Lamido's facade express ideas of survival. Moving left from the fishermen, one sees a number of shapes that look like two converging triangles (Fig. 16). These signify the Mousgoum shield, an important item because of its ability to protect in war and to close off the tolek to outside invaders. On another wall this abstract image is given definitive form. The artist has painted a shape in red ochre and black that is almost identical to the painted and raised abstract images on the palace. Next to it is a smaller version of the image, above which the artist has written the Munjuk word gamar, meaning "shield" (Fig. 17). A spear painted between the two like shapes underscores the importance of past warfare in Mousgoum consciousness. In travelers' accounts and in field interviews, the Mousgoum and war are often connected. In the past, Salman Mbang Oumar says, "There was war. The Mousgoum often waged war." This attachment of warfare to indigenous history and ideals concerning Mousgoum strength become part and parcel of the wall's imagery.

[FIGURES 16-17 OMITTED]

A bas-relief of an umbrella, lying under the scene of the fishermen (Fig. 14), recalls the fantasias and fetes that are a staple of life in Mousgoum country (Fig. 18). Like the Lamido's blue umbrella seen in the tourist celebration, the shields and other objects represented on the palace wall help to codify the umbrella's importance in the presentation and definition of kingship. The umbrella, through its domical associations, also finds analogy with the tolek, each confirming the other's status as part of the Lamido's language of power. Ultimately, the palace facade in all of its elements constructs a complex diagram not only of the Lamido and his power in particular but of Mousgoum country more generally.

[FIGURE 18 OMITTED]

In the realm of the (post)modern, on a palace facade where art simultaneously asserts a cultural identity and gives the tourist an "authentic" experience, the Mousgoum can counteract what many in Pouss see as a loss of culture and ancestral knowledge. Here we are reminded of Evele Douniya's characterization of the newly constructed tolekakay as invoking "the memory of the past." Hence, the issues of the Mousgoum connection with the past and the tourist who may well feel that she or he has stepped into the past are completely intertwined. For the Mousgoum, tourism has worked neither as a means to salvage a dying form nor as a jolt to jump-start a timeless culture. Instead, while images on postcards, souvenirs, and other commercial items appeal to the Western tourist and become records of experience--my own included--they also open a space for the Mousgoum to reappropriate their own cultural imagery and re-create it in ways that articulate their ideas of their past and their perception of their present. Most important, this ability of the tolek to signify multiple meanings has allowed the Mousgoum to reshape and reinvigorate the structure on their own terms as a way of constructing their cultural identity at the new fin de siecle.

[This article was accepted for publication in June 2001.]

(1.) The Mousgoum speak Munjuk, but the most common designation for the tolek is the French term case-obus, which is used by French-speaking Mousgoum.

(2.) The French government issued a postage stamp depicting the tolek in 1938. See Figure 6 for another example of a stamp bearing the image of this structure.

(3.) Shelley does not tell his reader to which "Kirdi" culture he belongs. I have translated the quotations from his book that appear here.

(4.) I interviewed those Mousgoum quoted in this article between October 1995 and May 1996.

(5.) Uli are the impermanent markings that some Igbo women of Nigeria paint onto their bodies.

(6.) In a response to Ntsobe, Joseph-Marie Essomba added, "In books there are other aspects--pictorial, iconographical--that can bear witness to our culture." See The Cultural Identity of Cameroon (1985:289).

(7.) Nasr points out that the turban signifies that one's head is straight and makes the male wearer remember his function as Allah's servant on earth (Nasr 1993:112-13).

(8.) For discussions surrounding various aspects in the construction of a "Cameroonian identity," see the essays in The Cultural Identity of Cameroon (1985).

(9.) Amnesty International, Network Africa, and other local and international organizations have sharply criticized this policy, claiming that it has led to the abuse of power by local rulers. This abuse is allegedly being ignored by the president of Cameroon, Paul Biya, who is said to rely heavily on the influence and cooperation of traditional rulers in manipulating the electorate.

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STEVEN NELSON is Assistant Professor of Art History at UCLA, Reviews Editor of the College Art Association's Art Journal, and an Editor of African Arts. He is currently completing a book-length manuscript on indigenous and Western reception of Mousgoum art and architecture.