The Bakweri Elephant Dance of Southern Cameroon

The Bakweri are a small tribe of some 16,000 people who live on the slopes of the Cameroon Mountain. They are quiet and reserved and are not widely known outside the Southern Cameroons despite the fact that both the Premier of the Southern Cameroons, Dr. E. M. L. Endeley, and the capital, Buea, are Bakweri.
Not many non Bakweri have the opportunity of witnessing their ceremonies, and it is rarely indeed that the participants will allow photographs to be taken.
This is the season when the annual dances of the society (Njoku Male) are held. Members, in the higher grades at least, claim the power to own elephant 'doubles' into which they can change at will. There are four grades in Male known as Love, Venjuka, Tamba and Vekpa which have an ascending scale of entrance fees, and which are open to men only.
A member with an elephant double is thought to be able to trample on the farms of his enemies in elephant form, and to transport himself (and any friends he may link arms with) at tremendous speeds from place to place. Such a member must however take the risk that if his elephant double is killed by a hunter he too will suddenly die. The society came from Womboko on the other side of the Cameroon Mountain. It was there that the belief in the power to change into an elephant (njoku) seems to have been grafted on to the widespread Male society, which, without this belief, is found all over the inland Kumba Division. A number of Bakweri villages have the society. The most well known is Wokpaongo near Buea, but less accessible villages such as Mafanja, Wova and Gbasa can sometimes show more of the traditional features of the society.
First there is a general dance of the members of the society dressed in head and waist cloths, with their bodies smeared with red mud and decked with vegetation of various kinds. This dance is known as Veambe and the participants, some of whom are quite young children, wind in and out of the village to the rhythm of the drums. This is said to represent the movement of the elephant herd through the forest, but some of the members almost seem to be dressed to resemble the forest itself. Most of the old meaning of this dance is lost and young members view it as an opportunity for bizarre fancy dress.