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Gnetum
africanum can reach as high as 15 meters in height |
Nigerians,
especially the Ibo, are also very eager customers of eru. So eager that they (mostly women) go right
into the deep forests where it is found, often at about 15 to 20 kilometers from the village, to buy
on the spot. The excessively high demand especially from Nigeria and Gabon has caused the local
authorities to clampdown on eru exporters. The fear is that the ready market might cause the women
to harvest it destructively or unsustainably. And this is just what has been going on with
its introduction into the international market.
Officials
of the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MINEF) have expressed their misgivings about Cameroonian
village women selling to Nigeria with whom Cameroon is at war over ownership of the Bakassi
peninsular. "Those Nigerian women cheat our women and buy the eru almost for nothing to carry
home and sell at
ten times the price offered here," a MINEF official regretted.
Such fears explain why the
forces of law and order sometimes seize bagfuls of eru being transported by bus towards the
South West Province, notably Tiko and Limbe, where many Nigerian women come to buy and carry across
to Nigeria through the ready outlet by sea.
The
new forestry law has attempted to rationalize the exploitation of non-timber forest products whose
comparative importance as a source of income is receiving more recognition and attention.
According
to this law, anyone wishing to indulge in forestry exploitation activities must possess the relevant
authorization. This permit is issued by MINEF’s Department of Forestry. Most, if not all the
women who harvest eru for commercial purposes do not possess this permit and are therefore acting in
violation of the law.
This
notwithstanding, the market for eru is a lucrative one that continues to draw a lot of
"middlemen", especially the numerous unemployed female university graduates. Without a
formal structure as such, these women have set up veritable networks, establishing very strong
relations with steady customers who harvest the vegetable in the forests for their market.
They
buy and stock in large bags that they convey by truck or taxi to the bus station. Here, they pay for
the eru to be transported to another dealer waiting in Limbe. At that end, the dealer then sells it,
often to another waiting customer who buys all the bags and pays on the spot. The money is sent back
through the same channel to the middleman in Yaounde.
The middlemen
are generally referred to as "buyam sellam". They buy the vegetable mostly at the Mfoundi
market, one of the popular markets situated in Yaounde. Often, they visit the market in the
evening between 6 and 8 p.m.; the time the women begin arriving from farms in the suburbs of
Yaounde.
Usually,
they arrive in overloaded pick-up vans where on arrival, buyam sellams will fall on the bags of eru
basically fighting to get hold of them. "It is very tedious work", Elizabeth Bengono, one
of the ladies that has been long in the business said; adding that "to do this work, you must
be smartly dressed preferably in jeans except you have someone else to scramble over the bags for
you."
It
is not quite clear why demand for eru is high in the Yaounde region. But, it is popularly believed
that it is of very high quality compared to that from other regions.
Because
of the difficulties of buying eru in Mfoundi market, many well-to-do dealers now hire trucks that
they drive right into the forest or village markets where the vegetable is sold at an extremely low
price. Many of these dealers transport the eru past the poplar Tiko and Limbe markets to Idenau,
almost at the border with Nigeria. Idenau is situated about 40 kilometers east of Limbe by the edge
of the sea where a
very lively market exists. Eru bought here is transported straightaway to Nigeria by motorized
canoes.
Africans
in the Diaspora Receive Eru ‘Rations’
Barely
a few years ago, another thriving arm of the business was born. To furnish the huge west and central
African populations in the diaspora who are used to eru and nostalgic about it, most of them in
Britain, America, and France, numerous friends at home and entrepreneurs of varying caliber export
the commodity to Europe and other parts of the world.
The
eru is sliced, dried and packaged before exportation. Actually, in its fresh state, eru quickly rots
if not prepared within a day or two. But when sliced and dried, as the young man who was
stopped by U.S customs officials did, the vegetable can keep for months. In effect, eru is a species
of plant with very rare characteristics. Individuals and research groups have attempted to cultivate
it, notably the south Bakundu forest conservation project; but it has never quite worked. And it is
hardly to succeed because the liana only seems to thrive in the humid conditions of the tropical
thick forest.
Recently
in Britain, a laboratory isolated an "active ingredient" from the vegetable. According to
the Cameroonian botanist, Nkongmenneck Bernard, the scientists have not released the name of this
active ingredient to protect their intellectual property rights.
The
forest is fast disappearing due to extensive agricultural activities, logging, and bush fires, and
given that no project seems to have succeeded in cultivating Gnetum africanum ex-situ, one
begins to wonder for how long it will resist all these pressures.
Readers
Comments
Pius
Lukong is a Cameroonian senior journalist specialized in environmental and
health issues. Your emails will be forwarded to him by contacting the editor at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net.
