27 months

Roland Boula is the sole resident and caretaker of Madison Park, a swath of beachfront property hacked from the lush green coast of Batoke, a small fishing village some kilometers outside of Limbe. Batoke typically goes unnoticed to the traveler, or else it is known only as a mile marker on the road to Seme Beach Hotel, the premier luxury beach resort in the southwest. For what began as purely financial reasons (PCVs are notoriously cheap), Madison Park has become for PCV Jerry, our British pals Heather and Joe, and I the preferred weekend gathering place for sun, surf and sand. The next nearest seaside locale, Etisah Beach Hotel, demands twice the fee for entry (about $2) and in the final analysis has little more to offer. The same idyllic black sand beach available at Madison Park stretches past Etisah, not fifty meters distant, with its convenient beachfront parking, overpriced food and flocks of expats and pale European tourists day-tripping from the Littoral. Besides, the 500 francs saved is the cost of a beer in the village. ‘Nuff said.

Madison Park is still under construction and, to the uninitiated, appears from the ocean side to be little more than a jumble of grey concrete and multicolored plastic kids’ toys decaying in the sun. The fact is, for what it lacks in style it more than makes up for with comfy lounge chairs, shady mango trees, coconut palms and very nice people. Roland is one of those nice people. Over countless visits to Madison Park, Roland and I have developed quite a rapport. He lives and works at the beach, often sleeping in a tent pitched under a tree where the bush meets the sand. This may sound ideal to some, but his is a solitary existence in service to others in which he seldom leaves Madison Park, let alone the surrounding village.

Roland is unique among the many Cameroonians I’ve met for his deep and abiding love of American blues, jazz, gospel and soul. One afternoon I was surprised to hear Muddy Waters and later James Brown coming over the music set. When I asked about it, Roland produced a phone book-sized, dog-eared paperback encyclopedia of jazz, gospel and blues music. Without taking a breath, he listed from memory a litany of luminary recording artists: Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bobby Rush, T-Bone Walker, Elmore James, Little Johnny Taylor, Charlie McCoy, Mississippi John Hurt, Lowell Fulson, and Mahalia Jackson to name but a few. The man is a bona fide scholar. He even told me that, although he’d never heard it, he knew that Elmore James’ “Madison Blues” was his theme song. When I asked to see his collection he brought out a couple of MP3 CDs and a half dozen scratched-up vinyl LPs. He didn’t have a turntable to play the latter on, so was dependent on some poorly sampled MP3 compilation discs found on the street. One so-called “blues” CD included Kenny G, Shakira and (gulp) Westlife. For a true connoisseur, that didn’t just seem unfair—it was downright criminal.

Lucky for us, my sister Jamie had only the week before emailed me an Amazon.com gift certificate. The timing seemed too perfect to chalk up to coincidence. Amazon will ship books, music and movies to Cameroon via Europe, so I was set. I asked Roland to compile a shortlist of favorites without letting on to my scheme. Some months later (today, actually), my parcel arrived via Germany packed with DVDs, books and a selection of the very best American blues artists on CD. So, thanks sis—I wish you could be there to see Roland’s reaction when I hand him this: