Rhumsiki
Encyclopedia
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...
in the Far North Province
Far North Province
The Far North Region , also known as the Extreme North Region , is the northernmost constituent province of the Republic of Cameroon. It borders the North Region to the south, Chad to the east, and Nigeria to the west. The capital is Maroua.The province is one of Cameroon's most culturally diverse...
of Cameroon
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...
. Rhumsiki is located in the Mandara Mountains
Mandara Mountains
The Mandara Mountains are a volcanic range extending about 200km along the northern part of the Cameroon-Nigeria border, from the Benue River in the south to the north-west of Maroua in the north . The highest elevation is 1,494 m , the summit of Mount Oupay .The region is densely populated,...
55 km (34 mi) from Mokolo
Mokolo
Mokolo is the departmental capital and largest city of the Mayo-Tsanaga department, in the Far North Province of Cameroon. It is the fourth largest city in the Far North Province, after Maroua, Yagoua, and Kousséri...
and 3 km (2 mi) from the border with Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
. The village is similar to many others in northern Cameroon. The inhabitants, members of the Kapsiki
Kapsiki
The Kapsiki are an ethnic group of Cameroon. They live in the Far North Province in the Mandara Mountains. The Kapsiki are considered one of Cameroon's Kirdi ethnic groups due to their resistance to Islamisation during the Fulani jihad of Modibo Adama.-References:* DeLancey, Mark W., and Mark Dike...
ethnic group, live in small houses built from local stone and topped with thatched roofs; these homes are scattered throughout the village and surrounding valley. Nevertheless, Rhumsiki is one of Cameroon's most popular tourist attraction
Tourist attraction
A tourist attraction is a place of interest where tourists visit, typically for its inherent or exhibited cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, or amusement opportunities....
s and "the most touristic place in northern Cameroon".
The attraction is the surrounding scenery. Gwanfogbe, et al., describe it as "remarkable", Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet is the largest travel guide book and digital media publisher in the world. The company is owned by BBC Worldwide, which bought a 75% share from the founders Maureen and Tony Wheeler in 2007 and the final 25% in February 2011...
as "striking", Rough Guides
Rough Guides
Rough Guides Ltd is a travel guidebook and reference publisher, owned by Pearson PLC. Their travel titles cover more than 200 destinations, and are distributed worldwide through the Penguin Group...
as "breathtaking" and Bradt Guides as an "almost lunar landscape". Writer and explorer André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
wrote that Rhumsiki's surroundings are "one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world." The spectacular effect is created by surrounding volcanic plug
Volcanic plug
A volcanic plug, also called a volcanic neck or lava neck, is a volcanic landform created when magma hardens within a vent on an active volcano. When forming, a plug can cause an extreme build-up of pressure if volatile-charged magma is trapped beneath it, and this can sometimes lead to an...
s (the remnants of long-dormant volcanoes), basalt
Basalt
Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...
outcroppings, and the Mandara Mountains. The largest (and most photographed) of these rocks is Kapsiki Peak, a plug standing 1,224 m (4,016 ft) tall.
Fortune-telling
Fortune-telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. The scope of fortune-telling is in principle identical with the practice of divination...
who predicts the future based on a crab's manipulation of pieces of wood. Rhumsiki is now a standard item on most tourist itineraries, a fact of which the travel literature disapproves. Rough Guides describes Rhumsiki as "overrun" and "tainted by organized tourism", and Lonely Planet calls it "something of a tourist trap
Tourist trap
A tourist trap is an establishment, or group of establishments, that has been created with the aim of attracting tourists and their money...
." The standard guided tour of the village leads The Rough Guide to doubt its authenticity: "The appeal of the visit is largely to get a taste of the 'real' Cameroon, and the built-in flaw is that the more people come, the more distorted and unreal life in the village becomes."
