33. Cameroon: Yaounde Ebolowa to Gabon border

                                                           Yaoundé, Cameroon Wednesday, 23 February, 1983

(HELENA) We’ve run out of passport pictures for visas (I had 30 made before leaving Bolivia) so yesterday we had some new ones taken. Today we picked them up so we can go to about 4 more embassies. Luckily the studio was on the way to the Gabon embassy. The appropriate guy wasn’t “on seat”[1], so we had to wait. Then we had to wait a good while again at the Congo embassy. For some reason we had problems communicating with the secretary (a man). At first we thought he was insisting that he’d given us the forms when we’d come the other day to inquire. (We later found he was saying that the forms were locked in the head man’s office.) Then when we said we wanted a visa for 20 days, he insisted on 15 days and on knowing the exact date of entry and how long we planned to be in Brazzaville. We eventually got things straightened out and parted on the best of terms. Now we’ll just have to see if we can actually get there.

Lunch at our favorite kiosk, this time one plate of riz-haricot (rice and beans) and one haricot-plantain, and we shared. Love that fried plantain.

Our tent is nicely protected by a fence, but we are not protected from watching eyes. I tried writing to our possible contact N‘Kayi (formerly Kayes?) Congo, but the children really broke down my concentration. They seem to be particularly ill-mannered because they keep asking to come in or for us to give them something. A group of boys even came up and started sling shooting birds in the tree right above our heads. One of their rocks even hit me, but our getting mad at them (I in Spanish and Dan in French) didn’t phase them. Maddening!

We wanted to get that letter off to N’Kayi as soon as possible, so we took a bus to the post office. What a zoo! Dan had been before, so I thought he’d know the ropes. Ha!  He took the letters to one window, the woman had scales, but no, he had to go to the next window to have it weighed. Long line there.  Once they were weighed, the other woman had left, so over to another stamp window. Sorry, I don’t have that combination of stamps, go next door. Sorry I don’t have it either, but I’ll go to the very first window and buy some of the stamps for you. There must be a terrible stamp and organization shortage.

Next we embarked on our granola shopping: oatmeal, roasted corn, peanuts, and a whole coconut. We also bought Cameroon peanut butter and some reasonable cheese. Lisa baked bread in the evening, so we borrowed bran, oil, honey, and vanilla and the oven to complete another mess of granola. We’ll repay the oil and honey and we gave her a fair quantity of the finished product.

(DAN) We were in and around Lisa’s kitchen from 1900 to 2330, breaking and grating the coconut, mixing the granola, watching it, and chatting. She talked a lot about her impressions of Cameroon after 5 months, and we picked up quite a bit. However, it kind of has me worried. Last week’s Newsweek had an article about Margaret Mead’s first efforts in Samoa, and how her methods and results are under criticism today. For example, she was on the island for only about 6 months and lived with expatriates all the while. She conducted her investigations through an interpreter. All of that could describe, in a way, our methods of “investiga­tion”. We are forced, for security reasons, to seek situations that we are familiar with, i.e. missionaries or church compounds --people who ostensibly have our values and outlook. Our deepest conversations are with people who have enough education to speak English well enough, or French so well that they can understand our stumbling French. That alone affects their outlook. However, I guess we will just have to combine that with what we think we see and try to understand.

We have been impressed with some evidence of the priorities that seem to have been exhibited by the government here. We estimate that Cameroon must have a similar or slightly larger GNP than Bolivia, based on many of the same industries. However, here in Cameroon they do not have television. In Bolivia they’ve had TV since the late 60’s. Yet Cameroon’s shelves are stacked with a variety of pretty high quality local products that are a good bit cheaper than imported goods. Nigeria has many local products, but they turn out “invariably” to be more expensive items than the former imported goods, and the government there has to outlaw importation of the goods to support local industry.

On the other hand, there is an imposing set of glistening white buildings on the top of another semi-leveled hill not far from the palace hill. Lisa says that these are buildings of the Peoples Congress, built for Cameroon by the Peoples’ Republic of China. These buildings form no part of the Cameroonian government functions and are solely for hosting functions (?). They are supposedly empty most of the time as one can only host the Organization of African States every 45 years.

 

Ultramodern architecture in downtown Yaounde.  We are not sure what function the egg performed.

However, according to Lisa, the last president, Ahidjo, seems to be fairly well admired but had seven palaces built over the country. The one here in Yaoundé is really something. It is on the top of a hill that has been partially leveled, the building has the outward appearance of a big bank building, kind of blocky with the top floor buttressing out. Ahidjo, who had been president since indepen­dence in 1960, voluntarily (and I mean voluntarily) stepped down last December to everybody’s surprise. He is a Muslim from the north, probably from an area that used to be part of the Borno Empire.

Lisa, who did her volunteer work in Anglophone, Cameroon, says that there is a bit of tension between the English and French-speaking areas. The western, Anglophone,  part considers itself to be the most productive in coffee and cacao yet the French speakers dominate the administration, and “none” of the revenue is reinvested in the English section (various examples).

What follows is a description of what we were NOT able to do.  We were in a store buying some provisions at about 1830 when we happened to overhear the telltale sounds of a soccer game over the radio. We inquired in the store and it turned out that Egypt was here to play Cameroon for some level of the Africa Cup (Cameroon is defending champion). Helena and I looked at each other and we knew that in honor of our father and brothers we must go to the “match”. With our provisions in hand we ran out into the street and flagged a couple of taxis. The first one asked too much and the second refused to go because it would be too crowded. We were in sight of the stadium (on yet another hill), Amadhu Ahidjo Stadium that is, and we wanted to go badly but we conferred with Lisa’s night guardian; he was of the opinion that even though the game was just starting there would be no more “cheap” seats[2]. Maybe we can see a cricket match in South Africa instead.

                                                                                  Yaoundé, Thursday, 24 February, 1983

We did not have to be at the Congo embassy until 1000 so you could say we did not start any fires with our efforts to get around early. First, Lisa did not stir before 0800, and we could not “freshen up” till she unlocked the door into the house. Secondly, it started to rain and it simply was not inviting to stir from the tent. Helena will never make a good English wife. I had to get out of bed and wrestle with the optymus to get it started, then go back to bed so that she could wake me with a cuppa!![3]

Our visas were not ready but the autorité called us in, asked the same questions we had put on our form, filled in the visa, and gave it to us. No two embassies are alike.

We spent the rest of the day rustling around in preparation for our next leg of the trip. In many ways it is the most unpredictable since our jaunt through the war zone in Spanish Sahara. Geoff, the bearded author of Africa on the Cheap, has never been to either Gabon or Congo and has never heard of or from a traveler there. He describes Gabon as having the most expensive buses in Africa. Furthermore, it is supposed to be the middle of the rainy season there; he claims the roads are impassable now, and our very accurate Michelin road map shows no paved roads. Its rain chart shows Libreville as having heavy rains September through May, with the heaviest rains in April. However, it promises to be a unique, different country. Supposedly one of the richest countries in Africa, with oil, lumber, and rubber and “less than one million people”, it is all mountainous rain forest and formerly much of it was occupied by Pygmies. It has had a rightist government since independence and the current President Bongo was “recently converted to Islam”.

Congo (Peoples’ Republic) also promises to be different from what we have seen. It is the only country to have been unreservedly "Marxist-Leninist" since independence (now having been joined by Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia).  Until recently not many US people went there at all. We want to visit friends of Bolivian friends who are experts with the sugar industry there. Congo is also supposed to be in its main rainy season, but there is a rail crossing from Pt. Noire to Brazzaville and we should be able to use that. We think that this route is more attractive, in spite of the uncertainties, than going through the Central African Republic and down the Ubangi and Zaire rivers. We still hope to travel some on the upper Zaire as we leave.

One thing we did today was go check in at the US embassy to see what the travel recommendations were for Gabon and Congo. We talked briefly with a “consular official” and she said there were no warnings out for either. I am afraid that we both left the establishment in a kind of bad mood. Each time we have gone to an embassy or USAID office they have a way of making one feel insignificant. On the side of the embassy, I would think that they would appre­ciate US citizens who only ask 5 or ten minutes of one’s time to get information that in turn might keep them from spending days getting one evacuated because of an avoidable disease or because of avoidable political problems.

We went to buy honey to repay Lisa and we found that we’d used too much in the granola. Not that the recipe didn’t call for 2 cups, but at the price of  $5/kilo one can afford to do some short cutting. It is delicious, however, with that and fresh coconut, lots of bran, and fresh peanuts...

Once again we are ready to go with all clean clothes, sheets, aired sleeping bags. It is amazing how fast all that deteriorates, and how much effort goes into maintenance. That will double now that we are really hitting humidity city, Africa. Actually, Libreville is only the second rainiest city in Africa. Douala gets more but we were there at the right time. (The latter averages around 200 inches a year or over 4000 mm).

Our route in yellow.  Basemap from Nation Master.

                                                           Yaoundé - Bitam, Gabon, Friday, 25 February, 1983

(HELENA) For the first time, we almost succumbed to the temptation of just staying in bed and staying one more day to get really rested up. Dan hadn’t had the best night’s sleep and I was perfectly willing to put off the uncertainties of travel for one more day. (It’s always a relief to be in one place for several days so you kind of get to know where to go for things.) Fortunately we realized that it would be fatal, so we hauled out and were all packed up by the time Lisa opened the door to the house.

We had hoped to avoid the city bus rush hour, but we hit it right on. We fortunately took the bus right at the beginning of the line, so we managed to push our way on (no orderly line) and maneuver our way off. It feels pretty awkward to have two heavy packs in the middle of a packed bus.

Our first ride was as far as Ebolowa and we left almost right away. Once again they charged a lot for baggage. It seems to be the accepted way here. That ride lasted for a couple of hours. It seemed pretty crowded (a large van with 18 passengers), but later we learned what really crowded was. On arrival at the gare routier in Ebolowa we were offered very expensive rides to Ambam, our next stop. Fortunately we were with someone else (a school teacher) who explained to us in English  that this man was trying to cheat us, that we should take a taxi to the other gare routier, and there get a car for the correct price. We were going to walk it, but we took a taxi with him and it turned out to be quite far. And I thought Ebolowa was a small town! A good part of the road from Yaoundé to there was paved (according to Lisa it is because the president is from the area).

At the other gare we experienced something new. Instead of the usual lineup of vans and taxis, the men in charge took up their collection before the van drove up. There were a lot of people waiting and I’m afraid that most of them went in that first van: two in front by the driver and the rest (18 adults and 6 children) packed into two parallel seats that faced each other. Dan and I were at the back, so we often seemed to get the weight of our whole side of the van on us. That section of the road was fairly rough.

In Ambam we got another surprise. The driver dropped us all off at the gendarmerie and blithely drove off  --so we were told-- to unload at the gare. The chef dispatched most people very quickly, but he kept those of us who were planning to cross the border. I was getting impatient about our unguarded bags (especially our food bag --after all, that granola is costly!), so I finally asked if I could go and Dan could stay to do the formalities.

It took me a while to locate the van, but when I did everything was there. Almost immediately a young man was there offering a taxi to the Gabon border. Naturally I couldn’t make a deal on my own, so I let him help me take the bags to a more visible place and tried to get across that we would wait till my brother got there. I got a bit worried because I’d seen several other people handing the chef 600 CFA. But Dan soon showed up, he made a deal with the taxi, and we were off. This time we shared a smallish car with the driver (a very young man that had a very roguish smile he’d flash at the two women beside him), the two women, and two young men wedged in beside us. One of the latter was the driver’s companion. Our luggage was somehow stuffed into the boot, so even though the car looked not very old, we could see why it would age quickly. Somewhere during the 30 km trip, we dropped one woman off, delivered a bar of soap and carton of cigarettes, and picked up a covered pot that apparently contained our driver’s lunch.

The second we arrived at the border, several young men were there to accompany the remaining woman and us to their boats to cross the river. Once again no way to get around paying exhorbitant rates: 200 CFA per person, 150 CFA per pack. The whole crossing must have taken all of two minutes.

Cameroon expenses, per day per person - us$ 9.26

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[1] A term we first encountered in Nigeria where a public servant is not behind his or her desk, or is otherwise unavailable.

[2] In light of subsequent success of the Cameroonian football (soccer) team I really wish that we had been able to do make the match.

[3] I have subsequently encountered this height of civility in India under the name of “bed tea”.