Life and AIDS Work in NorthWest Cameroon

The Last Resort

After I completed the last of my medical exams and paperwork in the capitol, Yaounde, I headed out of the city to spend my last weekend in Cameroon at the beach.   

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Kribi is beautiful town, a  fishing village where in the late 1890s the German colonial government set up a port and a few administrative offices. 

You can see one of the German buildings from the fishing docks.

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Kribi has recently opened up to tourism.  About five years ago, the road from Yaounde and Douala was paved, and some oil rigs were put up off the coast to process the oil shipped down the pipeline from Chad. 

Before you could say Copacabana, a beach town sprung up complete with an homage to the icons of all beach bums worldwide, Bob Marley and Che Guevara.

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I stayed at a romantic little place right on the beach.  So romantic, in fact, that I felt really awkward being there by myself while clusters of young expats frolicked and lounged about with their beautiful friends and lovers.

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Still it was a beautiful place to watch the sunset.  I tried to think deep thoughts about my time in Cameroon and what I will do next, but insight evaded me.  So I watched the sun go down and the lights go on on the oil rigs off the coast.

Tourism in the Extreme North: Intriguing, Annoying, Hazardous

Tourism in Cameroon is tough. Although this country has many spectacular sights and is far more developed than other African countries, the decrepit transportation infrastructure makes travel grueling and dangerous.  Furthermore, the lodging and food can be quite expensive for what it is. 

I wanted to go to the Extreme North Province of Cameroon to satisfy my curiousity and wanderlust, but in the end, it did not feel like it was worth it.  Fortunately, Alex is a lot more laid back about the experience.  Having never been to Africa before he expected the difficulties and was willing to roll with the punches.  I just got annoyed. 

I realize now that what I like most about being here is living and working in a small village where I know people in the context of their daily life and community.  Being a tourist is not at all fulfilling in comparison.  After dealing with all the delays, discomforts, and potential dangers, what you get to see of the destination is quite shallow and superficial.

Here are some of the highlights.

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Mosques and Mobil stations are ubiquitous.

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Alex in an elephant's footprint.  We did not get to see any elephants but did see their guerilla tactics to keeps the annoying tourists at bay:  stomp up the road so that the land rovers can not get past.

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What is faster:  a land rover or a herd of giraffes?

Giraffes!   Here a herd of giraffes races past.  When they run it looks like they are in slow motion, but they can cover a lot of ground with their gangly limbs.
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The beautiful Porte Mayo hotel, a relaxing oasis in the hot and dusty town of Maroua. 

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View of the volcanic mountains surrounding Rhumsiki.

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The similarities between Cameroon and Mali are remarkable.  As in Mali, it is hot, dry, the people are predominantly Muslim, and the lingua franca is Fulani.  The main food is millet paste and sauce made of peanut butter or various green leaves.

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Alex playing with a cat in Rhumsiki.

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A woman sits next to her house, two granaries and kitchen.  She is one of 46 wives of a chief.
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Bus accident.   Our bus hit a pothole, lost control, and toppled over into a culvert on our way back.  We were not hurt at all, but one man died and a woman severely broke her leg. 

The only good thing to come out of it was that we had a long talk with an Iman from Chad in the shade of a thorn bush, while waiting for our luggage.  Then, some nuns from a nearby town took pity on us and fed us delicious food and put us up in their calm sanctuary, without even asking for a marriage certificate.

From Yaounde to Ngaoundere by Train

After a day in Yaounde, Alex and I made our way to the extreme north, bracing ourselves for a long complicated trip.   

The start was auspicious.   We heard that it could take three hours to get a reservation on the train and that you might need to show proof that you are legally married in order to get a two person sleeper car.  So just to be on the safe side the Peace Corps director wrote us an affivadit to  prove that we are legally married.  (Our marriage certificate, slightly stained from the rain that came through the roof of the train car.)

But once we arrived at the train station, we sailed to the ticket window and got a ticket in less than one minute.  Then, another surprise, the train left at 6PM sharp, with none of the usual delays while waiting for the vehicle to fill up or baggage to be loaded, as on the buses.

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Settling into the sleeper car for the long trip north.   Having a beer and good reading material can make the 18-26 hour trip almost bearable.

We chugged through the night uneventfully, until we woke to the sounds of yelling outside the window.   The train had stopped and the security guards were arguing with some strangers who had congregated on the tracks.   We did not find out till the morning that armed robbers were known to stop the train in the midde of the night in order to grab what they could.

At 3AM, it was ominously quiet again and for the next 7 hours we did not move.   A cargo train had derailed ahead of us.   

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A view from the train

At about 10AM we finally started rolling again, when suddenly at 10:30AM the train lurched to a stop again.  There was a flurry of activity at the back of the train.   A man from one of the local towns who was surfing the trains jumping on while it rolled through the station and jumping off once it was in the outskirts, lost his grip and fell partway under the train and lost part of his hands as the train sped past.   After another long delay he was put on the train to transport him to the nearest hospital.

We finally arrived in our destination, Ngaoundere, about 10 hours behind schedule and 26 hours after our departure setting a new record for delays. 

As Alex said, "Maybe we have wandered too far from the beaten track."

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The train station in Ngaoundere.  Only 8 more hours in the bus to go!

By way of Dubai

My husband Alex is coming to visit.  His initial flight was canceled, and his new itinerary takes him to Cameroon by the circuituous route of Boston- New York- Dubai- Nairobi- Yaounde.   Despite the inconvenience he is thrilled to see another part of the world, and he has always enjoyed spending hours and hours lookign out airplane windows examining geography from the air.  Here's an excerpt of the e-mail he sent to me from the Dubai airport.  Enjoy!
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This is one of the coolest trips I've ever been on. We flew in over the Persian gulf and the man made resort islands that they have been building here. It looked a little like Los Angeles from the sky except for the minarets and mosques.

The gulf here has an almost indescribable color. I can't do it justice but I can say that it varies from dark blue to the color that copper turns when its very weathered. That copper green color shows up everywhere there is an up-welling of current and everywhere a ship has sailed. So each large ship had billowing clouds of blue-green water for miles behind. As we were taxiing towards the terminal I saw the ski area. Yes, the ski area. Actually, its more of a ski facility.

The flight had almost no one on it, and Emirates airlines is a joy.  They have a camera on the nose of the plane and one on the bottom looking down that you can tune in to on the computer video system at any time. Since the seats around me were empty, I set one of the monitors to the forward camera and one to the down camera and then I could watch out the window too. I was in hog heaven during take off and landing. Sunrise on the screen in front of me was cool too.

The plane has outlets that I can plug my computer into. So I watched one movie on the airplane system and one on my mac and I worked for an hour or two. I've got an hour or so here in Dubai then a five hour flight to Kenya and four hours to Yaounde. Yipes, thats crazy. I'll probably sleep a lot on those flights.

In Dubai its fun to stumble around gawking only to notice other Europeans and Americans with what is obviously the same stupid look on their face. I'm going to go walk around and enjoy the next hour or so in this mall.. um, I mean airport.

Trek to Lake Oku

On Sunday, we rented a 4-wheel drive truck to take us to the mystical and mythical Lake Oku in the nearby Ijim forest preserve.  This is an important site for studying biodiversity, and it has some rare species of birds, frogs, and vegetation that are not found anywhere else in the world.  For more information about the interesting ecology of this area, see the following links

• http://www.birdlife.org/action/ground/bamenda/bamenda3.html 
• http://www.projectexploration.org/projectfrog/fu-082106.htm

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Piling into the truck:  F Paul and Shannon in front, my father and mother in back.  ==============================================================================

The road was so steep and slippery, sometimes the drivers' assistant needed to get out to put stones under the wheels and push the truck out of the muddy ruts in the road.

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When the road got too steep and our bones ached from bumping along the rugged track, we got out of the truck and hiked up the rest of the way.

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F.Paul leads the way.  He has a masters degree in ethnobotany and studied the medicinal uses of the plants in this forest preserve, so he was definitely in his element.

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An Alchemilla glistening with dew.  This forest preserve is one of the few remaining cloud forests in West Africa, and the plants gather most of their moisture from the mists that are continuously drifting through.

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Prunus Africanus.  The bark of this tree has been stripped and sold to a pharmaceutical company which uses it to create a drug to treat prostatitis.

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The clouds drift by the summit and when they lift, they reveal the mystical Lake Oku.

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After visiting the Lake Oku, we stopped by to greet the second class chief.  We gave him 5 liters of wine as a tribute for visiting the forest.   We marveled at the traditional carvings on his house.  Only three people in the entire Kom kingdom are allowed to decorate their dwellings in this manner.

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The women's group of Anyajua were excited to meet my parents.  They sang a traditional welcome song and danced around with peace plants in a gourd.

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While in Anyajua, we also stopped by to say hi to FPaul's mother.   Here we are posing in front of the house where he was born.

Street Scenes

This weekend I went to Kumbo, the second largest town in the North West Province, to meet with another Peace Corps volunteer who works on small business development.  I needed her help to review the book-keeping and inventory system for the tailor workshop for people living with HIV/AIDS.

The road to Kumbo passes through a large valley surrounded by a series of vertiginous volcanic ridges.  It was about a 4 hour drive along the bumpy dirt roads, but at least I did not have to get out and push the vehicle as they have to do in other parts of Cameroon.

Here are some scenes from the road.

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Kumbo has seen a fair amount of urban development as measured in multi-storied cement buildings, supermarkets, internet cafes, and a plethora of photocopy and international exchange places where you can wire/or receive money from relatives working in Europe or the US.  There are also two major hospitals and scores of expatriates working on everthing from health care to the eradication of child labor and child trafficking.

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Cab driver posing in front of an office complex with an internet cafe, a Western Union office, photocopy shop, hardware store, and other business offices.

Another important sign of development: a dumpster at the market

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Left: Cathedral in "Squares," the main gathering place in Kumbo.

Right: Chicken in drainage ditch.

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Even in the towns, there are still lots of areas for growing corn and bananas and herding coats.

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Scenes from the Mobil station in Bamenda where I can buy delicious passionfruit yogurt and catch a shared taxi back to Njinikom.

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Travel African Style

I traveled from Yaounde to Njinikom on Friday, arriving after dark after a very long day traveling.  I started at 7:30am at the Peace Corps headquarters in Yaounde.  They dropped me at the public bus station in some far flung red dirt neighborhood.  Some grungy but strong young men in dark shorts grabbed my two 50 pound suitcases, water filter, motorcycle helmet, and tossed it on top of an old rickety bus with bundles of leaves, rice bags, but no live animals.  Then we waited about 2 hours for the bus to fill up to overflowing.   In true African style I ended up sharing my fold down seat with a two other hefty, assertive women--one a flight attendant from KLM on the way to her home town for a family meeting. She sat with her pelvis on my left thigh and when she fell asleep her shoulder was under my chin.  On my right side was a young bureaucrat with gold rimmed shades.  He was so close I could feel him breathing against the entire length of my body.  Such physical intimacy with total strangers is quite an experience... interesting but uncomfortable.   Here are some photos to give you a flavor.

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