Crafts and Technologies: Some Traditional Craftsmen of the Western Grasslands of Cameroon

Abstract

• Since time immemorial, inhabitants of the Western Grasslands of Cameroon in west Africa have been evolving an educational system devoid of literacy. Teaching focused on traditional crafts, including weaving, stitching of traditional dress, carving, sculpture, pottery, smelting of materials and smithing. The skills the people learned served them well, as many of them followed trades, vocations and professions that helped in improving the social and economic life of the area. This book aims to document those crafts in order for the people of Cameroon to have a record of these skills which are gradually dying out and to encourage them to continue to practise these ancient crafts. Each craft is described in some detail; the areas it is practised in, materials used, techniques involved. Photographs document stages of production and examples of the end result.