One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. - Henry Miller

29-30 August 2019, bus to Bafoussam / mini-bus to Foumban
Hotel Pekassa de Karche 13,000CFA (R325) 

By an extraordinary piece of good luck, a General Express bus was parked near our hotel when our auto-cycle taxi dropped us back there after our visit to the Bandjoun chefferie. Charl ran to the hotel to collect our bag, while I located the driver and asked if he could take us to Bafoussam - which he could as the bus was on a maintenance run and was completely empty!
From the General Express station, having booked tickets to Yaoundé on the earliest Sunday bus, we took a taxi to the station that services Foumban, and there bought two tickets at 1,000CFA each, and were immediately loaded into a waiting mini-bus. It is always best if at all possible to be the first to board as you can then grab a window seat away from the door, and the seat beside it. “Seat” is a misnomer, as the mini-buses are filled to capacity and beyond, taking no account at all of seat-defined space. At the door-end of each row of seats is a very small flap-down seat, which fills the remaining space by squeezing in an additional bum in some discomfort. On our row of seats were four adults, one toddler, and one breast-feeding baby, plus our bags. I counted 22 souls on board when we finally departed… The toddler, a little girl in a pink and yellow dress, first stared at Charl with wide, wide eyes, then sat on his lap, ate a fried banana and fell asleep, while mum breast-fed her baby and the young man at the end of the row studied charts and graphs on his cell phone.
In Foumban, we visited the royal palace and museum, the Musée des Arts et des Traditions Bamoun, and the artisans’ street.

Lonely Planet: “The must-see attraction is the sultan's palace, home to the 19th sultan of the Bamoun dynasty. It has a fascinating, well-organised museum providing great historical insight into the region. At the time of writing, the treasures were being transferred to a startling new building symbolically shaped as a serpent and a spider; the palace itself will remain open to visitors. Constructed in the early 20th century and modelled on German colonial architecture, the palace was built by the remarkable Sultan Njoya, who invented a corn-grinding machine, a script for the Bamun language, and a religion which fused Christianity and Islam. He had 681 wives, which made him well qualified to write his own version of the Kama Sutra (look out for it in the museum shop). Museum artefacts include a ancient feathered cloak worn only for the initiation of each sultan, beaded buffalo masks sported by members of secret societies, documents written using Sultan Njoya's script and a drinking horn made from the skull of one of his enemies… Palace entrance includes a visit to a nearby ceremonial drum housed in a bamboo hut: it’s a huge creation topped with animal hides and carved with a double-headed serpent.”
Wikipedia: …There is also a market and a craft centre, while Foumban Royal Palace contains a museum with information on Ibrahim Njoya who invented a new religion, Bamum script, and the artificial language Shümom. Foumban is the … seat of the Bamoun Dynasty … founded in the 1394 by Mfon Nshare Yen… Bamoun became a part of German Kamerun on July 14, 1884. The sultan was beheaded in a conflict with the Nso people from the North West Province of Cameroon, and his head carried off in 1889… Foumban is one of Cameroon's major attractions and an important centre of traditional African art. Its jewel is the Palais Royal, seat of power for the Bamoun people. The ruler of the Bamoun is known as the sultan, and the Bamoun can trace the lineage of their sultan back to 1394. The palace, completed in 1917, resembles a medieval chateau. It houses the Sultan's Museum, which contains a multitude of royal gowns, arms, musical instruments, statues, jewellery, masks and colourful bead-covered thrones carved in the shapes of the men who sat on them.
A few hundred metres south of the palace is the Musée des Arts et des Traditions Bamoun. This extensive collection has exhibits on Bamoun history and art, including cooking implements, musical instruments, pipes, statues, masks, gongs and an ornately carved xylophone. The road that connects the two museums is the Rue des Artisans, home to sculptors, basket makers, weavers and embroiderers, and one of the best places in Central Africa to buy wood carvings.
The economy was largely agricultural, and slave owning was practiced on a small scale. The Bamum kingdom also traded with neighboring populations. They imported salt, iron, beads, cotton goods and copper objects.”