Day 5

I got very little sleep last night, with the rare z’s filled with bizarre, passionate dreams. The morning was unremarkable except for a botched attempt at French toast. Lexi and I headed to the Ecotourism office in the afternoon for a tour of the nearby tea plantations. The tea plantations themselves were underwhelming, although the opportunity to discuss Cameroonian issues with our guide, Ferdinand, made the trip more worthwhile. The tea plantations of Cameroon went from a reasonably successful government operation to a privatized monopoly which employs a fraction of it’s original workers, lowered wages, and ships the majority of tea overseas, according to Ferdinand.

On the route back from the plantations, he elucidated on the funeral practices of the Bakweri people. In a traditional home, where thatched roofing connects several smaller huts and floors are bare earth, a deceased elder is buried in one of the rooms (huts) of the home and the door is locked. When there is a dispute in the family, a family member is ill, or an issue requires ancestral intervention, the significant individuals enter that room. Outside of traditional villages, this practice is rare, but even in Christianized communities, esteemed family past are buried in front of their homes, marked with small porcelain tombs.

In addition to guiding tours of tea plantations, The Ecotourism office provides services for trekkers on Mt. Cameroon and the surrounding ecosystems, including guides and porters to the summit. The guidebook said that the Ecotourism office hires many former hunters. Indeed, Ferdinand tells us that he himself used to be a hunter on Mt. Cameroon, before becoming a guide for the Ecotourism office.

Once I learned that Ferdinand could track, I tried to get him to teach me, but the tidbits of advice he gave I already knew and his more advanced classes are for only for guides. Still, I think I will pester him some more.

We returned to the mission, and I enjoyed a frigidly refreshing shower. We tried a restaurant off a side street called Prime Cateres with surprisingly tasty fried fish. Lexi’s verdict of the fried chicken was also top-notch. After picking up some fried street-beignets, we took a taxi to Beno bakery. It had a lower selection of western name branded, but more practical items that Cameroonians may actually buy. In short: they had peanut butter! The can is all oily, but the price wasn’t bad (1750CFA=$4) for 1½ pounds. I’m going to spread this on freaking everything. Also grabbed a sausage, a couple of sugary beignets, and beer (Becks!). I’m a happy man.
By the time we were heading back to the mission, it got very dark. We both managed to cram into a taxi with 3 other passengers (in a sub-compact). When they say don’t drive or ride at night unless you have to, they mean it.

New critter update: millipede (not in my bathroom, but in the mission hallway).

Day 4

There’s another America staying at the Presbyterian guesthouse. Her name is Lexi, a fellow blogger prowling through Africa. Though to be honest, to describe Lexi as a ‘fellow blogger’ is to imply we’re on equal footing, which, is far from the truth. She’s a member of an enviable breed of traveler-journalists, freelancing her way from Senegal to Madagascar, financing the 6-month trip out of her own pocket. Well, I suppose the last part isn’t so enviable, though it’s not far from what I’m doing. Check out her blog at Inkslinging in Africa.

Lexi is a Godsend. Everywhere we go, it seems, she has some advice to impart or experience to lend.

I took her to the university to find someone who could speak to her about polygamy for an article she was writing. I was also trying to find a computer lab on campus, which I did, only to discover there was no internet connection anywhere on campus that day.

On the way back from the university, we asked a taxi driver where to get some good food. “OIC” he said. Henri (Dr. Kamga) had told me that the OIC is one of the nicest restaurants in town, so I figured it would be expensive.
“Where can we get some cheap food?” we asked.
The driver thought for a moment, and replied knowingly “The OIC.”
We decided to go check it out anyways, but found that it, indeed, was a very nice restaurant, and it was, indeed, fairly expensive. We also managed to find a Fakoship, a small grocery store chain, along the main road in Buea. Jam, canned tuna, honey, liquid dish soap; hell, they even had frosted flakes. Everything was really expensive, though. We also ran into a couple of soldiers outside of the Fakoship: no problems, they were nice, but it was just a reminder to start carrying my passport on me at all times, in case one of them decides he needs to see my ID.

I didn’t end up getting anything from the Fakoship, but I did get about 10 cups of rice from the local market in Bueatown. I still need to get some peanut butter and some sort of preserved meat. They have a lot of dried fish in the market, but it looks and smells unappetizing, and judging from my experience with dried fish in Asia, it probably isn’t that great. Lexi points out that the kitchen in the guest house has an oven—a rarity in Africa—so now there is a possibility to bake meals and do more with the plantains, yams, and potatoes than fry them in palm oil.

I jury-rigged the wall adapter to fit into the socket by pressing a chair up against it. I only use it for the laptop, so it’s not too much of a hassle. Still, I’ll get the proper adapter (huge 3 pronged) if I see it. Ironically, I took that one out of my adapter kit since the guidebook said they didn’t use it in Cameroon. Bah.

They also gave me a room to use at the University of Buea. I should have access to the University’s wireless network from the room, but the best part is that it says “Visiting Professor” in big letters on the door, hah!

New critter update: geckos.

Day 3

It’s been a quiet and rainy Sunday, nothing extraordinarily special or productive about it. I fell asleep yesterday at 5pm, a runaway attempt at an afternoon nap, and woke up an hour before midnight, Cameroonian time. After a quixotic attempt to figure out which adapter would fit in the unfamiliarly shaped outlet in my room, (quixotic as in, running headlong into it with various adapters until one fit. None of them did perfectly, but Jim, the manager, assures me with a smile that any of them should work. Sigh). I read a little bit, then went back to sleep from 4 to 9am. I managed to sleep through the morning call to prayer and the buzz of hundreds of students waking up (the Presbyterian mission school, a large multi-building complex, is literally within a stone’s throw from my window). After a drizzly walk into town, I learned that most stores, the market, and Duke & Harvey’s restaurant were closed, probably for Sunday. A local man assured me that most of them would be open again at 2pm, but by that time, I was comfortable with my books under the mosquito net, and the rain had swelled to a voluptuous shower (to steal a line from Nabokov).

Woke up again at 8pm. It seems every night brings new creatures into my room. Last night it was a decent sized cockroach, and tonight I discovered a leech lazing in my sink. I have no idea how he got there, but if I had to guess, I would have to say he crawled up the plumbing. I sprayed some insect repellant on him and tossed him in the toilet, the final resting place for most of my visitors.

Cameroon: Days 1 and 2

I'm posting this from Dr. Kamga's office computer at the University of Buea. I got into Cameroon at 1:30pm (about 8:30am Eastern time) but I haven't gotten a chance to hop on the internet until now.

The flight over wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It was long, to be sure (about 17 hours from DC to Addis), but my seatmate was very friendly, the service was great, and they served food and alcohol often enough to make the flight better than it otherwise would have been. I'm going stop short calling the flight pleasant. I watched all three in flight movies at least once (twice for the kingdom fo the crystal skull), and read through the bulk of the Poisonwood Bible. It is a wonderful book, by the way. I finally finished it in the hotel Ethiopian Airlines provided and was blown away by how much the book was able to contain in 500 or so pages. I highly recommend this book.

Hotel Ararat was a decent hotel room with a small TV and a fridge. They served complementary dinner (disappointingly, not Ethiopian cuisine) and an exceptional breakfast the next morning that put to shame every other hotel breakfast I've ever experienced. I also determined (too late) that each hotel room had it's own hot water heater. After the flight, I felt dirty enough to justify an icy shower on a cold Ethiopian night.

Pretty much all of Ethiopian Airlines' flights to Subsaharan Africa go through Addis Ababa, so rubbed elbows with a lot of interesting folks. There were two women on my flight that were adopting Ethiopian children and were flying over to take them home; Nicole, a perky blonde who was working a 10 week social work internship at an adoption agency; Karen and Janet, two occupational health nurses on their way to Johansburg for a photo safari before going to a nursing conference; and Dr. Emily Vargas-Baron, a former director for USAID in the Clinton years who now worked for UNICEF and the RISE institute. Over the non-Ethiopian dinner, she gave me some powerful advice, mostly about not complaining about cold showers.

The flight from Addis to Douala was fairly uneventful, except when a frenchman spilled red wine on my pants. Now I have a pair of pants with splotches of purple down one leg.

The doctor at the desk next to mine is playing Bryan Adams on his computer. Driving in Cameroon is as crazily exciting as I hoped it would be, and Dr. Kamga, who picked me up at the airport, drives a Mercedes, although the speedometer is forever stuck at 20kmph.

The room at the Presbyterian mission is nice and cozy with it's own bathroom. When I first moved in, there were some oversized bugs here and there, but after their eviction, I've gotten comfortable with the rest of the nonmosquito roommates. Hot water is hard to come by, so I've gotten used to cold showers. It's actually pretty invigorating. Nothing wakes you up in the morning like ice cold water dumped on your head.

What else is there to say? I'm still a little jet lagged, but not enough to stop me from taking a walk around Buea. It's beautiful here and in the morning, the clouds on Mt Cameroon part, baring the summit, which is majestic. Enormous cloud banks roll in under Buea, like a parade of fluffy primordial titans around a sailing, floating mountain.