The Naked Man of Maroua

I had been in Maroua barely one week when I was asked a question that I honestly never expected to hear in the orthodox environment of northern Cameroon.
“Have you seen the naked man yet?” a returned volunteer innocently inquired, as we wound our way across town in the back of the VSO jeep. I admitted that I had not. Our driver, Aziz, let out a snort of laughter.
“You’ll meet him soon enough,” he promised.
And, sure enough, I did. A couple of days later, liberated from training for a few blissful hours, I embarked upon a brief yet illuminating tour of the local produce market. My chief aim in this endeavour was to photograph the fly-infested slabs of meat that had so filled me with horror on our first tour of the city. And so it came to pass that the first time I saw the naked man was through the lens of my camera, poised and ready to photograph sliced animal remains. He appeared as if on the distant horizon, a lone figure of matted hair and leathery skin among the conservatively-dressed market traders. It was all I could do to stop myself taking a quick shot, Hungry Joe-style.
It is said that you can set your watch by the naked man. Every day he completes a circuit of Maroua city centre, beginning at roughly the same time and taking the same route at the same serene pace. At midday, for example, he can usually be seen outside the MDDHL office; he reaches the central market by late afternoon. Vendors always give him food; any who dare refuse find that their wares are soon marinated by a fresh stream of urine. He has no possessions as far as anyone can tell, and never seems to require more than basic food and water. Perhaps he is preparing himself to take orders as a Franciscan monk, in which case someone really ought to warn him that there are no abbeys in the Far North Province.
Stories abound as to the origins of the naked man. My favourite is as follows: he fell in love with the wife of his best friend, who came home one night to find the pair in bed together. Stricken with guilt, he promised his friend that if ever he betrayed him again, he would cast himself out from society. He resisted the call of his loins for a few days but finally heeded to his lover’s charms once more. Awaking the next day to the terrible realisation of what he had done, the man ran from his friend’s house, leaving his clothes behind, and from that day forward abandoned civilisation for the life of a vagabond.
Romantic as it is to imagine that the naked man is doing penance for a doomed love affair, the likelihood is that he is simply another victim of mental health problems for whom the State and society can do nothing. Hospitals here can treat malaria, typhoid and amoebas – they even tried to recommend a cream that would cure my freckles – but they cannot help people who hear voices or experience violent mood swings. Such people are left to fend for themselves, abandoned by families who cannot cope with their behaviour.
Then again, perhaps the naked man is not so crazy. In a country where temperatures can soar above 40 degrees, it must be nice to be able to dispense with the inconvenience of clothing. And why pay for food when you can get it for free? Anyone who can get away with doing as he pleases, eating whatever takes his fancy and defacing others’ property without so much as a word of abuse against him is, in my book, an absolute genius.