I recently read a travel account describing crossing
from Tchad into Cameroon and then into Nigeria, and how Cameroon felt like a
breath of fresh air in between two tense countries.. We felt much calmer once
got into Cameroon. One indication I see now is that we took very few pictures
in Nigeria, but once we crossed into Cameroon we started taking considerably
more pictures. Of course this terrain is
much more like where we lived as youths in tropical Bolivia, and like where we
live now in the Bolivian Amazon.
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| Terrain near the Cameroon-Nigerian border |
Nigerian border – Mamfe, Cameroon, Thursday
February 10, 1983
(DAN)
Then
we walked across the bridge to Cameroon. The officials were not in at the
customs office. However there were three men resting on the step in the shade
--one had his head back and was snoring loudly-- and they told us that the
official had just gone to the river and would soon be back. In the meantime I
went and bought some drink to tide us over. The border crossing was only a
small clearing in the jungle, maybe 10 buildings on both sides of the river and
the weather was hot and humid. Finally the guy showed up, had us
declare all our possessions, wrote these and our currency sums on a
piece of scratch paper and went through our bags one more time. Again, Price’s
neat Iowa University Hawkeye cap was the desired piece. He made a feeble
attempt, “Do you wear this often?” I
assured him that I wore it all the time and he let us go --to emigration that
is.
No
one was there either, so after a short wait we started to eat our lunch and
then the dude showed up. He proceeded to give us our most thorough check since
El Aiyún, Spanish Sahara. He checked our passports, health cards and everything
in our packs. Here we sweated (more) again because he took our pile of letters
(50+) and started opening and reading a little of each. You see, we had
declared our currency again and our non declared money was in those very
envelopes. He bogged down after a while but still read the address and looked
at the stamp on each one to “make sure that we did not get any letters from
inside Cameroon”. By this time the people in the yellow Land Rover had driven
up outside and were zipping through the formalities. They did not even touch
the pile of stuff that they had in the back. It turned out that the man was a
British diplomat in Lagos.
Contrary
to what we had been told, there were no vehicles at the border to carry us on.
So while I did some more checking, Helena asked the couple if we could have a
lift to the road or to Mamfe. The woman was agreeable, and though the man was
reluctant, they made room for us and we set off. It was a good thing
they came along because the Cameroon road turned out to be nothing more than a
track through mountainous terrain. . It improved after 30 km but was still not
so good as Bolivian mountain main roads.
We arrived in Mamfe at dusk.
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| General map of the route taken to Limbe and then Douala |
Our
ride was planning on going at least as far as Bamenda, but were told at the
Mamfe customs that it was another 5 hours, so they decided to stay. They had
not been given the proper documents at the border, so had to go driving around
town looking for people, until 2000 hrs.
We
stayed with them till they got to the one hotel in town. It was expensive ($16)
but we didn’t have any alternative. It was an old safari type motel because
each room had a wide veranda, a sitting room, a large bathroom, tile floors
and high ceiling. Aside from the price, we also found that the Naira has a low
value here and we only got 50 cents for each N that we paid $1 to Mr. O, a rate
in itself a bargain.
The
room only had a bathtub, but a cold soaking bath felt wonderful after the long
hot day. They are still speaking English in this part of Cameroon, and
apparently better than much of Nigeria that we saw,.
Mamfe - Bamenda, Friday, 11 February, 1983
(HELENA)
We hoped that we could continue our privileged ride in the Yellow Land Rover to
Bamenda, so we got up at 6:15 and were
ready soon after that. Finally we decided
Dan would go over to their car (they seemed to finish getting ready right when
we did) to thank them for yesterday’s ride and to say goodbye. The representative of the British High
Commission said, “Well, I guess you can carry on from here.” You couldn’t be much clearer than that so we
headed for the taxi park on foot. As we walked along we discussed how a more
hardened traveler would have just shown up with his pack and said “here I am;
let’s go.” In the end, we were glad we hadn’t been offered a ride because the
one we got was priceless.
On
the way to the taxi park we saw a lot of school children in their different
uniforms. (We saw a lot of children in the Calabar area walking to school
carrying their tallish, four-legged stools upside down on their heads.) A young boy showed us the way to the park by
walking several blocks with us, up and down hills, but he wasn’t
uniformed. It was 730 on a cool morning,
but we’d already worked up a good sweat.
Mamfe
is stretched out over a good sized area, but judging from the fact that it has
only one hotel and its taxi park is a pretty dead place, it is just a
provincial town of medium size. We have
given up on asking population figures for places as people either say they
don’t know or often give us guesses that do not make sense.
When
we first got there, there were three vehicles lined up to go to Bamenda, but we
were naturally the first passengers. The drivers rushed Dan, but we decided to
play it cool and wait till more passengers came. There were two Peugeot 404 station
wagons, a maroon one and a blue one, and a green Toyota pickup double-cabin.
While we waited, I bought some bread (for the first time we had a choice
between loaf “British” bread and French bread) and Dan bought us the first
street café con leche that we’ve had in six weeks. It is most important
to note here they use unsweetened milk rather than the sweetened condensed milk
used in the rest of West Africa. (Woops! We are now in Equatorial
Africa.)
Before
long, the two Peugeots roared off who knows where, and we were left to sit and
watch the uniformed children walk by. Although we didn’t realize it at the
time, today was Youth Day (formerly Empire Day), so everyone was especially
washed, starched, and ironed looking. One group of young men looked like
waiters in a fancy French restaurant because they wore black trousers with
WHITE sport coats. A lot of the girls wore light blue sleeveless dresses with
white trim, but there were others that wore white long-sleeved blouses with
skirts of wine, gray, or black material. Of course there were always kids that
obviously weren’t privileged enough to go to school.
Finally
at about 9:15, one man showed up to buy a ticket. We decided to amble over to
get a fair seat. We couldn’t pay yet, but the guy had us put our packs on the
back. Before long, the blue 404 roared into the park, the driver hopped out
with a broad, innocent smile, and said “Let’s go everybody!” When Blue drove up so blithely, Dan paid our
fares thinking it was a sure thing. That started off one of the most
interesting tiffs I ever hope to see. Blue claimed he had written his name down
first and had simply gone off to wash his car. Green yelled back something to the
effect of “too bad you should have stayed”.
Most of the yelling back and forth was done in the local version of English, so
we were able to catch a few phrases like: Green - “You SMALL, John, you PLENTY
small!!” After a bit more of the fireworks, Blue put our packs and the other
suitcase on top of his car. Somehow Green got them back into his truck, and
started to drive away. But being a determined man, Blue pulled Dan’s pack off
onto the ground and he and Dan jumped on the Green as it started to pull away.
That way I stayed with Dan’s pack while he watched mine. He drove all the way
out of the park before he stopped.
Eventually
Blue won out. He grabbed all the baggage
and tout suite tied it on. When he had first driven up, we had claimed
the two seats beside the driver, a decision we were to praise over and over
again as the day wore on. The first man had actually been buying a seat for his
woman friend, and she put up quite a fuss (though not directly to us) about the
front seat. By 10:10 we had a full car with 4 people in the middle and three in
the back seat. We went to buy gas, an amazingly simple task of simply driving
up and getting it, after all the fuss we used to see in Nigeria, and drove back
to the park, probably to rub it in to the green guy.
10:30
we left Mamfe and started on what we’d heard was a 5-hour drive. We saw some
beautiful tropical forested scenery as we drove along curvy but tame roads. By
tame, I mean that there were never big cliffs and it was always plenty wide.
The driver (Blue, but we’ll now call him John) really knew his road well, so we
took all of the ruts, and there were some deep ones, quite gently and without
any sudden braking. This was in
unbelievable contrast to any driver we had had in Nigeria. HOWEVER, what went
on inside of the car was far from tame.
After
we thought we were finally on our way, a man along the road flagged us
down. John stopped, and while a man in the middle seat took advantage of the
stop to “ease himself” (as our Nigerian friend, Alfred, expressed it), the new
man calmly took his place. The other one returned, yelled at John, and finally
tried to yank the new one out onto the road. John soon tired of that and
started to pull away, forcing the first man to jump in and sit on the second
man’s lap. And off we roared. First man then started in on John and he and John
carried on a yelling argument for about five minutes. He finally cooled down
and seemed to sit fairly contentedly on the other man’s lap, BUT Miss Loose (as
we shall call one of the women, since she dressed with a rather low-necked
shirt and talked...) was not going to let John off so easily. After all, she
had not gotten the front seat and was now having to share a seat with four
other people. She would yell at him continually minutes at a time,
always coming up with a new name to taunt him with. For instance she would
repeat in a sing-song way “teef-man, teef-man, teef-man (thief-man) and carry
on. Other names I can recall are monkey, animal, etc. After a few minutes she
would settle down, there would be some ten blessed seconds of silence and John
would put in “you not tire, you not tire?” Then we’d get going again. I don’t
know how long that went on, but several times Dan had to sort of remind John to
keep his eyes on the road. Even the calm man in the middle seat (he spoke
excellent English and French and we later found out he was an English
professor) asked him to either stop and argue or go on and keep silent. Things
finally petered out (John did not stop driving) by the time we stopped
for lunch in a small town.
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| Our Blue Peugeot 404 and "Small" John under the hood. |
It
was another beautiful small town set on a short hill amidst taller ones covered
with palm trees. No wonder we see so much palm wine (white and milky) and palm
oil (orange and icky) for sale. We ended up spending an hour and a half there
because John had to do some repairs on the oil filter. Dan and I
finally went to sit on a bench on the veranda in front of the store where we’d
bought our orange drink. All of the
stores we’ve seen in Cameroon have neat benches out in front. We didn’t tire of
watching all of the kids in uniform and grownups in their holiday duds. They
were playing some music loudly and every once in a while we’d see a little kid
dancing by with perfect rhythm and grace.
Finally
we were on our way again, but not for long. We came to a town where they were
celebrating in a big way. All of the passengers stayed in place, but a buddy of
John’s handed him some beer to drink. Groan. A very loud groan when we saw him
head inside to drink. Dan finally went and asked him to come back; otherwise he
might have just stayed. He kind of speeded up then and took more chances, but
he settled down once Dan and the professor asked him to watch where he was
going.
All
along the way we’d pick up and drop off passengers, so there were often five
people piled into the middle anyhow. For some reason the back seat wasn’t too
popular. Finally we saw that it was even dustier than the rest of the very
dusty car.
We
started to climb and get into more populated and more cleared areas. All the
way we had crossed a lot of little dark streams running over stony beds.
An
hour before reaching Bamenda we passed through the least attractive part that
was pretty cleared and had some stone outcroppings. That was Bali, a resort
popular with the Europeans, complete with the “Bali Safari Lodge”.
Right
at Bamenda we finally hit pavement. Somehow the good ol’ 404 didn’t seem to do
as well. John let us out opposite the soccer stadium where a big game had just
ended. I don’t think we saw any soccer played in Nigeria, so its popularity
here makes it easy to believe that Cameroon didn’t do badly in the World Cup. Before we left, however, we saw John and Miss
Loose rumble off together in the Peugeot.
It
was 1700 hrs, and dark was in the offing, so we took a taxi to the Presbyterian
mission that Geoff said we could camp at. It was a little more expensive than
we’d planned, but it’s on the side of a hill overlooking one of Bamenda’s
beautiful valleys. From the door of our tent we can see pine, eucalyptus,
mango, and banana plants. Our only complaint is that no one in town
sells cold “minerals”. Sigh.
Bamenda, Saturday, 12 February, 1983
(DAN)
We had not had an opportunity to send mail so we spent the morning getting a
big batch ready and then headed into town. The town seems fairly large (100-150
thousand?), but the business district is pretty well packed around the soccer
stadium and one does not have to walk far. The post office was closed due to
the holiday but the market was in full force and we had a good selection. Here
in Bamenda they have the most avocadoes we’ve ever seen in one place. They are
6 cents apiece so we splurged and bought 18 cents worth and had them for lunch
and supper. All were among the best we’ve ever eaten. Neither too firm nor
overripe. Just buttery, and with full taste. Wow! Bananas are about 2
cents apiece for the big ones, so we have been enjoying them as well.
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| View of Bamenda |
We
got a further look at Bamenda, and as yet our impression is of a relatively
clean, well planned town set pleasantly among hills. It appears to be on the
edge of a fault, because along one side there is perhaps a 1000 ft cliff and
beyond even higher mountains. It all makes for a picturesque and unique place.
We have decided to stay a few extra days to enjoy the weather and the view.
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| Road out of Bamenda |
We
washed our clothes in the early afternoon. You can tell that we are a long way
from arid plains because the clothes were nowhere near dry by night. The Center
here has the best arrangement we’ve ever seen for communal
hand/clothes-washing. They have a long room with two large, circular, massive
sinks. These sinks are about 4 ft in diameter, just the right height for saving
one’s back, and built of stone and cement so you can really put in some elbow
grease. The drain and faucet are both in the center, and the latter has a
homemade head that shoots horizontal jets of water all around.
The
Center in general seems well planned and well cared for. There is a central
office building with classrooms, an auditorium, etc. There are a couple of
blocks of dormitory rooms, “self-contained units” (I guess with kitchen and
bathroom) and a lot of personnel housing sprinkled over the side of a hill. The
Center is about 10 years old and has been set up for education, mainly women,
youth, and literacy programs. They do however rent out rooms or lawn to
travelers, groups, etc. when they have room. Tonight, for example, a group of
very rambunctious young men in soccer shorts arrived. Kind of cramps Helena’s
style around the bathroom and wash room.
The
Presbyterian Church here got its “autonomy” in 1957, but we have learned that
there have been missionaries since the last century. Now the missionaries are
predominantly German “with a few US”. The Presbyterian church seems to have a
good hold at least in the English portion of Cameroon. We have seen many of
their churches, and in Mamfe they had a huge high school with a gorgeous
campus.
Bamenda, Sunday, 13 February, 1983
We
were VERY determined to get caught up on our journal, so we spent most of the
morning doing that. For breakfast these days, we’ve been enjoying our granola
(made in Jos) with diluted evaporated milk. We’re pretty proud of our efforts.
After
lunch we set out to walk a different part of Bamenda. We chose to climb the
most impressive peak within easy walking distance. We walked most of the way up
on a foot path that went straight up. Every few steps we’d turn around to
admire a new beautiful view. Our goal was two huge black rocks at the top of
the hill. Before reaching them we crossed a fancy new road that wound its way
up the mountain. Later we found this was the road to Bafouasam. We couldn’t
climb the rocks, so we followed the road to the top where we got a fairly
complete view of the city: red square roofs (from the red dust) mixed with
green trees. It was just a nice peaceful walk on a nice peaceful Sunday
afternoon. The only touch of excitement was when we saw an old truck that had
been carrying fire wood and had apparently lost its brakes on a downhill curve
and crashed into a tree, knocking it down. We also passed a funeral celebration
where the women were shuffling around in a big circle, much in the way they did
in Orodara, Haute Volta.
For
supper we tried a local product: paté chocolatée. We used it as a spread
on bread and bananas and it contains chocolate, oils, and peanuts. Sleeping in
a tent is very conducive to getting to bed early. We’ve been sitting under the light at the top
of the stairs to the main building for our reading and writing, but our weak
backs can only take so much.
Bamenda, Monday, 14 February, 1983
(DAN)
Since we didn’t get mail off Saturday, we spent another morning getting more
ready. Mommy will be fit to be tied when and if she gets twenty pages of the
journal at once. This time the P.O. was open and we got our business done ($5
worth). That is several days’ food, so I hope you all appreciate it.
We
got to see Bamenda on a work day and there is simply better planning and implementation
here, compared to anything we have seen in a long time. The vehicles are there
but there is no congestion or accompanying panic that we saw in all but the
villages in Nigeria.
Speaking
of panic, we picked up this week’s Newsweek, and it (at least the
African issue) had quite a bit about the illegal immigration in Nigeria. It is
amazing that all that forced repatriation happened while we were in Nigeria and
all we heard were rumors[1]. One
reason that was not brought up in the article is that the religious riots in
Kano last year where several hundred people died, were incited by a cult that
originated in and is spread by Northern Cameroonians. The author made some statement about President
Shatarie’s foolish efforts to carve a new capital “from the jungle”. In reality
the proposed new federal capital is in Central Nigeria and in open savannah
quite suitable for large urbanization.
Much more so than the swampy island of Lagos.
Our
route into Cameroon was shown as one of the “exodus routes”, yet we’ve never
seen a sleepier border.
We
went to market again and enjoyed some more of the wonderful avocadoes. Tonight
Helena even made up a pan of guacamole from two avocadoes, four small tomatoes
and an onion. This we ate with the last of our “corn chips”.
We
did more writing and sorting through our things getting ready for possible
hitching. There are a lot of Europeans here in Cameroon to hit for possible
rides. Transportation is really hitting us hard so we will try to save
there. We spent over $170 on
transportation in Nigeria, and the trip from Mamfe to here cost nearly $15
apiece.
We
have not commented much on the clothes people wear because it has changed so
subtly on our route. For women there is the basic long wrap-around skirt of
bright print, sometimes a matching blouse and piece for carrying babies. Cameroon
has changed the most, actually. A lot of women wear smocks made out of the
bright material. Everywhere some of the more modern women have the material
made into fitted skirts and matching blouses, especially those in banks, etc.
Here in Cameroon that “modernity” is more common; today in the center I saw a
woman with such a costume and a velveteen blazer. The men here wear western
“Third World apparel”, many times snappy or of snappy origin but wearing thin.
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| Cameroonian woman and children |
The
people in Southern Nigeria dressed very similarly, and we even saw some women
in bikinis on the Nsukka campus!! This is partly in rebellion to the very
popular Muslim robes in the Northern part of Nigeria. Rosalind seemed to think
that early Igbos also wore robes or smocks.
Yesterday
on our walk we saw three enormous western churches, one Baptist, one
Presbyterian, and the other unknown. The Baptist church surprisingly had very
beautiful pillars of carved wood and a caned pavilion that housed a traditional
hollow-log drum instead of a bell. I wonder if there was any controversy over
the carving, because some of the figures could easily be “idols”. The
Presbyterian church had bare concrete flying buttresses.
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| Log drum instead of church bell - Bamenda |
[1] I have a student from Nigeria
and he recently mentioned that very large woven shopping or packing bags that are
still known as “Ghanians must go bags”.
Welcome back! - Price from Florida
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