Indigenous Settlement Types among the Mbum of the Nkambe, Plateau of Cameroon: Continuity and Change

One of the many ways in which man has over the years been striving to adapt to his changing natural environment, so as to ensure his continuous survival, has been in the domain of settlement or housing technology. The environmental changes demanded adjustments to man’ s technology associated with his shelter, and as a consequence, a lot as to what concerns the true nature of indigenous settlements have been gradually disappearing with time. This paper therefore, tries to reconstruct, for purposes of posterity, the nature of indigenous types of shelters of the Mbum ethnic group on the Nkambe Plateau of Cameroon. Oral traditions, archaeological ruins found at the archaeological/historical Mbum site of Mbajeng, and ethnographic research provided the data for the research. It was discovered that the Mbum have three main indigenous types of settlement architecture, most of which have either been modified or become extinct over the years. The first consist of houses constructed with sun-dried blocks and thatched with grass; the second with bamboos, sticks and also thatched with grass, while, the third had circularly arranged stones also thatched with grass. The last two are gradually dying out while the first is being modified with zinc roofs and walls plastered with cement and sand. In the light of these disappearing indigenous housing structures, the paper concludes that Africans should borrow only alien technology, which when blended with local technology, ensures their sustainability and existence as a people.