Among the country's best-known writers are the novelists Kenjo Jumbam and Mongo Beti, both of whom have written about Cameroon's relationship with its European colonisers. The music of Cameroon is among the most popular in Africa, especially makossa , a popular dance rhythm you'll hear blaring out of clubs and discos. Makossa is adaptable to a wide variety of instrumentation, from traditional thumb pianos to guitars and synthesizers. Another popular dance music is bikutsi , typically sung in Ewonde. Cameroon has some of the best food in Central Africa.
Manioc leaves are one of the main ingredients, usually appearing on menus as feuille .
Street food is typically excellent, consisting mainly of grilled spiced brochettes stuffed into a bread roll with salad and dressing. For the next 400 years, southern Cameroon's history, like that of the rest of West Africa's Atlantic seaboard, revolved around the slave trade. Northern Cameroon, by contrast, was a battleground for various empires, notably the Kanem-Bornu in Chad. Despite an invitation from a Douala chief to set up a protectorate over the area in the 1850s, Great Britain dallied for decades and finally lost to the Germans in 1884, who beat them to an agreement by five days. The Germans were active colonisers, building schools, railways and plantations.