In 1949 Gerald Durrell arrived in the Cameroons to collect animals for zoos. In Bafut he met Fon Achirimbi II, and the two of them got on — well enough that Durrell came back, and well enough that the Fon helped him organise later expeditions.
For the hunting the Fon supplied four hunters. Durrell added a pack of six thin and ungainly mongrels whose owners assured him they were the finest hunting dogs in West Africa. He named the whole untidy ensemble of men and dogs the Bafut Beagles, and in 1954 he published a book under that title.
It was his third book, and the Fon of Bafut was the figure readers loved most — so much so that Durrell brought him back in a later book, A Zoo in My Luggage. Achirimbi II is not named in the text, only ever "the Fon".
The Fondom has been written about by anthropologists and by colonial officers. But for a great many English-speaking readers across the last seventy years, Bafut is a place they first met through a friendship, and a pack of scruffy dogs.