FADAM!

While in Buea for a wedding and climbing Mt. Cameroon, we saw a billboard advertising FADAM – Festival Africain des Arts Martiaux – with Jackie Chan depicted and listed as being in attendance, as well as Dominique Saatenang (“The African Bruce Lee”). It sounded like the event would be held in Limbe, so we decided to try to find out more.

I spent some time trying to track down confirmation that Jackie Chan was coming to Cameroon, stumbling upon blog posts parsing these claims/rumours. Further rooting around suggested that in addition to Jackie Chan, Gerard Depardieu would be coming to the African Festival of Martial Arts.

“Invités” means both guests and invitees, which is a little confusing.

Happily, it turned out FADAM was also coming to Douala so we went to check it out with a couple of friends. It was presented on an outdoor stage of the new Canal Olympia Bessengue cinema, right next to the train station.

Dominique Saatenang welcoming FADAM participants.

Overall, we really enjoyed the event. There were of course some quintessentially Central/West African event characteristics. These included the starting time (delayed by only an hour or so due to setup and then waiting for the arrival of the governor of Littoral Region), the audio equipment exposed to the coming storm, and a vociferous audience members yelling “Kill him!” in French during the martial arts demonstrations. And of course Jackie Chan joined us via video greeting, which was first played without images. No sign of Depardieu!

Jackie Chan sends his regrets.

The martial artists were great. They were from all over the world (besides the Shaolin monks, the Croatians were a big winner with their slow-motion demonstration that morphed into real time), but the highlight was the Cameroonian contingent.

While they probably weren't as experienced as the visitors from abroad, it was great to see them given a platform in their own country, and there was a wide range of ages, as well as many young girls taking part.

Dominique Saatenang was very encouraging (he provided the commentary throughout) and the audience was generally respectful (although disappointed by the lack of evident violence in the Tai Chi presentation). He did a great job supporting these small, independent martial arts schools.

Getting some shelter once the rain started.

At the end of the night all of the performers assembled to take a bow, Saatenang began singing in Chinese with a Cameroonian woman (she sang in French). A Cameroonian friend of ours who worked in China for several years was able to help us translate. According to her summary, Saatenang sang that he was a Bamileké from Cameroon and he loves living in China, where he became a Shaolin monk. (It should be noted that the Shaolin monks left the stage promptly once the music started.)

Dominique Saatenang, crooner.