Symbolism of place and cultural identity in Cameroon

Abstract

Each society on earth uses essential symbols which resemble the key ideas, attitudes and values that unite its members. Places are key symbols of many cultures around the world that shape the social, economic, religious, political and psychological aspects of a people’s world view. Its study, therefore, is of primary significance in the systematic reconstruction of a people’s cultural and spiritual experience and provides us with a reliable means of information about different subcultural zones of many a tradition. Oceans, mountains, forests, grasslands, deserts, lakes and rivers form the word’s generalized natural areas. Cameroon is one of the few countries in Africa that has been blessed with all the five broad symbolic places. It is this ecological endowment that must have influenced the authorities to refer to Cameroon as ‘Africa in miniature’. In other words, Cameroon is a microcosm of Africa. Since the life and spirit of Cameroonians are invariably affected by the contrasts in the ecosystems, we intend in this article to demonstrate how a place like mountains can provide an indispensable resonance of symbolization in the cultural evolution of Cameroonians and how the influence of a particular ecosystem like the mountain can be used to establish, consolidate and propagate cultural identity in Cameroon. We shall examine the symbology of each of the major ecosystems briefly before concentrating on that of the mountain.