CAMEROON: ON THE HOME STRETCH

On the Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi to Cameroon, I had the bizarre and probably once-in-a-lifetime experience of disappointment that I would only be on the plane for 4 hours. While in the air I could savour the thrill of embarking on the final West African leg of the trip, but once we touched down reality would hit as we tried to get the bike out of Customs and put it back together (assuming the bike was actually on the flight, which we were not sure of). Eventually the descent into Douala was announced, the air hostesses stopped serving us drinks, and our plane skimmed low over some flooded, verdant fields and at the last moment cleared the lagoons to land on the runway. A staggeringly humid heat enveloped us as we stepped off the plane, the first we have had to contend with it in Africa. If you have been reading my blog, I do not think you will read any more complaints about how cold Africa is. A point in West Africa’s favour already.

Immigration and baggage claim were typically African, and thankfully had nothing on slick Nairobi. We wheeled our luggage trolley out of the airport and down the road to the Customs warehouse where we hoped to find our bike. To our relief it had been put on the plane in Kenya and taken off in Douala- awesome! The warehouse had “just closed” as it was a Friday evening, and they were not going to let us get our bike out until Wednesday (Christmas was Tuesday so we had lots of public holidays to deal with). This was African code for "bribe me," and we probably would have gotten the same reception regardless of when we arrived. This part of Cameroon is French-speaking, so Nick had found a guy who spoke a bit of English and could negotiate with Customs for us. Though they are very few and far between, this was one of those times we were not above giving bribes. In our defence, Transparency International ranks Cameroon as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and most of the time it was difficult to determine if we were paying documented bribes or legitimate fees. The CFA 2,000 (just over US$4) to “reopen” the warehouse and get the bike out was inescapably a bribe, but the rest of the CFA 20,000 (US$40+) went down on paper. That evening the bike was out, and we were able to disassemble the crate and reattach the front wheel in the floodlights of the warehouse. We had not expected to be riding the bike to our accommodation in Douala that night, but 4 or so hours after touching down that is exactly what we did.

Cameroonian drivers are retarded, we were lost and disorientated, and it took a very long time to find Centre d'Accueil Missionaire. By the time we got there I was feeling very sick, and realized it was probably the fish on the flight (Nick got the beef) that caused it. At this point I had been in Africa for over 9 months without really suffering from food poisoning, but thanks to Kenya Airways I spent the night throwing up.

The next morning, December 22nd, we were off to Limbe to catch up with Bea, the girl who helped me get my Cameroonian visa. I was still feeling horrible when we met her in Limbe, so after visiting her house and meeting some of her family she showed us the way to a hotel we could camp at. It was coming up on Christmas, and for the next few days when not catching up with Bea we were taking it easy on Mile 8 and Mile 11 beaches outside of Limbe. It took me days to recover from my intestinal problems, probably not helped by the heat and insanely hot and tasty Cameroonian pepe (chilli paste) I couldn’t stay away from.

Christmas Eve arrived African style with Nick getting his first case of malaria, but luckily he was able to manage some of the feast Bea prepared for Christmas lunch the next day. The food was phenomenal: fresh fish of course, chicken stew, rice, dodo (fried plantains), miande- a favourite of mine made of pounded cassava but noodle-like and somehow unique tasting, grilled plantain, fried chicken, and of course plenty of pepe. Awesome to have such an elaborate feast of local food prepared by a local.

For us it has been rare to genuinely befriend locals, be invited over for meals and to meet the family. I know not everyone has a hard time with this, but I have found it difficult to trust the authenticity of locals’ invitations and usually decline them. I would not say we are aloof, nor the type to be overly concerned with security, but travelling by motorbike and camping everywhere means that we are rarely alone and constantly dealing with inquisitive locals, being invited to “come back to my place and meet my girlfriend,” etc. Some offers of a coffee ceremony or a meal are certainly genuine, but too often an invitation from a local comes with strings attached. In the truck from Moyale in northern Kenya to Nairobi, the Belgian girl on the trip had been invited to a tea ceremony by a local guy, and his parents persuaded her to repay them by paying for him to accompany her to Nairobi. Even Bea admitted that white people mean money in Africa, and if a Cameroonian marries or befriends a white person their family will expect money and gifts. Thanks again to the aid agencies and wealthy middle-aged tourists on short trips that have been coming to Africa for decades handing out clothes, money, food, trinkets, etc. “Me blackie, you whitie, you give me money” as a Tanzanian interpreter summed up the general sentiment.

Anyway, it was a brilliant experience to visit Bea’s friends with her, spend time at her home with her family, and get to know so much more about African life that’s impossible to learn any other way. I know her through my grandparents who help sponsor Churchill, Bea’s brother, to study at a university in the US. The Prestons, who are friends of my grandparents, volunteered in a Cameroonian hospital and met her family while there. They are Churchill’s primary sponsors, and also keep in contact with the rest of his family and help them out. I would call the Elangwes middle class for Africa, and even though they don’t have much by Western standards they live comfortably by local standards. Their house is large (typical for Cameroon), they have a TV and stereo, cell phones that take pictures, Bea has a car, and they can afford to buy petrol occasionally and drink beer. However, Bea is the sole income earner for the family. Her oldest brother, Thomas, is a fisherman, but any money he earns is immediately spent on alcohol and he always asks Bea for money to get drunk once his is gone. She has brothers and sisters who do not live in Limbe and so support themselves, but she and many of her 7 siblings live in her mother’s house in Limbe (her father died a few years ago, so now it is her mother’s house). Churchill, her brother studying in the US, cannot yet help out much financially. Bea owns a shop in the market, mostly doing hair, pedicures and manicures, and has 3 staff to help. She has 2 children: Terripo, 7 years old, and Lona, 6 months old. Terripo's father died in a car accident when Bea was 2 months pregnant, and she has a sponsor for his education. The Prestons found someone in the US who is sponsoring him to go to a private school in Limbe where he apparently is a very good student. Lona's father, Prezo, is from Douala and works with computers- really nice guy. Bea is not married to him, and I did not ask why but it might have something to do with her leaving her mother’s house once she is married, and she does not want to do that until Churchill is making money to support the family. But, I never asked, so maybe she just does not want to get married, or maybe there’s another reason. She has a lot of energy and independence, and I enjoyed her company.

I had lots of opportunities to visit her friends while Nick recovered from malaria. In Cameroon, hosts always bring out snacks and drinks for guests when they arrive; guests do not bring anything for the host on normal social calls. I got the impression that what is offered is a way of conveying status. Normally 2 bowls of different snacks are put on the table along with soda. One woman, Frieda, a carpenter who has been to the US and Europe, offered 4 bowls of different snacks and beer. Cameroonians who travel have more status, or a bigger face- there is a certain expectation that they should live up to in everyday life. But people were always generous, and Lucy, one of Bea’s friends from school that she had not seen for a long time as she now lives in Douala, made lunch for us when we stopped in to her family’s house, and offered a bottle of sparkling wine and some whiskey. Frieda was helping Bea and others fill out the application for a US visa and coaching them for the interview, which is a very big deal everywhere I have been in Africa. Every internet café has at least 1 person filling out an application for the coveted US Diversity Visa lottery, and the date from which applications will be accepted is advertised all over towns. It would not be a big exaggeration to say that everyone here is looking for a way out to North America, Europe, Australia or New Zealand.

We had been planning to leave Limbe right after Christmas to head down to Kribi, another town on the coast, to settle in and meet some other travellers for a New Year’s Eve celebration. Some people we have met say they get over malaria in a few days, but it takes me and Nick about a week to start feeling better, and Nick was too sick and weak from the malaria to leave right up until the 31st. That morning I had another raucous bout of my recurrent Kenya Airways problem and was pretty miserable, but we really wanted to get to Kribi. Got in mid afternoon and were lucky enough to find a place where 2 Dutch couples were also camping, and made an attempt at celebrating the end of 2007. Seafood in Cameroon is awesome, and the kilo of shrimp plus some fish on the bbq was the perfect way to start the night, but for me it was a pathetic New Year’s attempt, and my body made me stop drinking around 10pm. Yikes! There was a bonfire on the beach at midnight that I dragged myself out of the tent for, but the 2007 holiday season was a bit of a disaster. Neither of us was even slightly hungover for the first day of 2008.

We enjoyed the golden sand beaches and seafood in Kribi for a few more days before packing up and riding to Yaoundé. After 3 hours spent riding laps around the city, getting directions in French from people who could not even name the street they were on, we finally by chance found the mission we intended to camp at. Lesson learned, get GPS points! For those of you who know the legend of Nigerian tourist visas: we walked into the Nigerian Embassy in Yaoundé Friday afternoon with a million photocopies of everything, and 3 hours later walked out with our Nigerian visas having handed over 2 passport photos, 1 photocopy each of our passports, and around US$200… what? Well, it turns out that we were profiting from the misfortune of the Consular who had apparently just died. Our visa luck finally appeared to be turning.

We were free to leave Yaoundé for a day on the Ring Road before the Nigerian scramble, and rode to Bamenda on the southern edge of the Ring Road. Although it is known for green hills, tea plantations and picturesque waterfalls, for us the highlights of the Road were the solitude of Sagba Hill and experiencing palm wine with some locals in Bamessing. We had stopped for Nick to take a photo, and wound up trying the cloudy liquid that was on offer in the bar. A few hours later we were on our way again, having talked to some seriously poor, intelligent guys who were angry at the government about corruption and the lack of opportunities in Cameroon. One of them read aloud from our Lonely Planet, which they found hilarious- a Westerner’s interpretation of their culture, squeezed into a page or two.

With our visa for Cameroon running out and only a few days to go before Nick’s birthday- we hoped to be in Wiki Warm Springs in Nigeria to celebrate- we tackled the terrible roads between Bamenda and the Nigerian border. The road is only 180kms but takes 2 days to traverse. The jungle scenery is stunningly beautiful, probably thanks to the fact that the road is too bad for logging trucks, and we ground through the muddy, rough sections in first and second gear. I would jump off on the really bad sections as the bike is so heavy that any extra weight makes it that much more difficult to control, and more likely for the back tire to slide out. No proper falls, though, and unfortunately the videos I posted do not do the road justice, so we have nothing to show for it- almost. Around lunchtime we noticed the radiator was really spewing water- concerning in the middle of nowhere. Made it to Mamfe, the mid point between Bamenda and Nigeria, and were expecting to have blown a seal and be on our way the next day. The seal was fine, but unfortunately we had cracked the radiator so it would take a day to repair it and wait for the glue to dry. Nick even went to the local radiator specialist and had him fix it using his special radiator glue. However, the next day when we tested it out water still gurgled out of the radiator once the bike had been running for a few minutes.

Nick thought the water pump might be the culprit, and on our second full day in Mamfe we weighed our options. There was no internet and no courier service in town, so we could not get the spare parts we needed sent to us there. We were both ready to leave Mamfe for many reasons, not the least of which was that our tent had been swarmed by ants like something out of a horror nature program- when it first happened it sounded like rain, and getting out to investigate I was met by millions of the critters. They bite hard, and we spent hours shrieking and jumping around as we tried to rescue our food without getting covered in them ourselves. Every night other than the first they came around 9pm and did not leave until 1am. Staying in Mamfe was not an option!

The day we discovered that our radiator still spewed water was Saturday and our visas expired the next day. If we wanted to truck the bike back to Bamenda to fix it, we would either have to pay a big bribe, get a new US$114 visa, or both to stay in Cameroon. The other option was to truck the bike to Nigeria and fix it there. There are no actual trucks on this road (it’s just that bad), and so we were hoping to find someone with a pick-up that was willing to take us. After wheeling and dealing with a few promising-looking guys standing around a truck, Nick organized a Toyota Hilux to pick us up the following morning. We were in a bad situation to be bargaining, and the guys had no problem getting US$100 out of us for the 80km ride. So, the next morning Tabe rolls up in his Mitsubishi Pajero to drive us and the bike to the Nigerian border, assuring us that the bike would fit in the back. Of course it did not and peeked out the back door, sustaining a bit of cosmetic damage to one of the side panels on the trip. However, it got us and the bike through the road and into Nigeria, where Tabe then agreed for another US$30 to take us to the first town across the border where we could get transport from, Ekom. The border crossing itself was fine, aside from a lot of sitting around while the officials hoped we would arbitrarily start pulling money out of our pockets. There was lots of this, but other than wasting our time it was not a problem at all and we were never directly hassled. We had limped out of Cameroon, bike in tow after not even having made it through one country since the last spare parts dilemma in Nairobi.

For the other side of the story, check out Nick’s blog http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/African-raid/

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