Chocolate, Medicine Men, and Gardening in my Underwear

One could see how being a tourist in Cameroon could be, shall we say, different. There aren’t really many roads per say, and though there are certainly sites to see, they aren’t really well marked. With anything. Not even a town name. (Then again, I remember touring a museum in Cairo and next to this incredible mummy there was a small placard that said mummy. Which I clearly wouldn’t have been able discern myself. Thank you, Egypt.) Anyway, when Mom signed up for Cameroon Spring Break 2008, I knew it would be an adventure. In general, I love everything that I do with my mother, save bowling, canoeing, and putt-putt golf, but that’s because I hate doing those things regardless of how wonderful the company is.

So after months of planning (read: weeks. read: days), the day came that she was due to arrive. Only at 4 o’clock in the morning, she rang telling me that she had missed her connection. In the meantime, the airline conveniently changed her flight from Douala to Dubai, which I can understand, cause they both begin with “d.” For days, it seemed—but really only one—that she would be never come. But finally that wonderful Air France flight arrived, and I tell you, it was bliss in movement. Reunited with my better half, we set out to conquer Cameroon—sans baggage, of course.

After a brief slumber (complete with a much needed dip in the pool—because even though my mother loves me very much, she still made it a point to tell me that my hygiene was “lacking”), we hit the road and headed for Bamendjou. It was so exciting to parade the “white woman” around town, and not actually be said white woman for once. We visited some schools that I had been working with, and the kids all made a point to touch her skin, as they did not really actually believe that it was real. Every person that she met also made it a point to tell her how young she looked and could not believe that she had a daughter who was 40-years-old. Thank you, Bamendjou. This does wonders for my self-esteem.

We spent much of the time in village gardening in our underwear, and walking around town (fret not, we put on pants before we left). Sadly, our stay in Bamendjou was interrupted with a visit to Douala to retrieve the missing luggage (which Mom claimed was filled with treasures, though they seemed too good to be true). Enter Piggy, our fearless driver who agreed to leave the big city of Douala and escort us to Bamendjou. However, there was one small glitch.

Not wanting to be caught by the police (and made to pay ridiculous bribes along the way), Piggy decided that if he painted the number on the side of his cab, the police would not know that it was a Douala only cab. Logically, Piggy thought that chocolate would make an excellent disguise. Unfortunately, this did not work. When stopped, the policeman bluntly asked, Did you paint chocolate on the side of your car? And he did. And so he paid. And so we moved on, though every time I put my hand out the window, I got melted chocolate on it. Thanks Piggy, thanks a lot.

But eventually we made it back to Bamendjou, for round two of fun. I unearthed the goodies that Mom had brought—and it was the best Christmas in March a girl could ever ask for. Though I felt kind of ridiculous for making so many requests, sometimes when you’re trapped in a village in the middle of nowhere Africa, you just really need some beef jerky to get you through the year.

We left the wild ways of the south and headed north to Maroua. The north felt like a different country—I exchanged the ways of the hard Bamileke for the soft-spoken Muslims, the verdant mountains, for the dry rolling hills, and left my life as a volunteer for that of a traveling vagabond. Though in style, of course. I think that in the time my mother was here, I spent close to what I had spent in the past eight months. But man, spending money ain’t never felt so good.

We arrived in Maroua late in the afternoon. The plane stairs unfolded and we descended into what I always thought Africa would look like—dry, and barren, with trees sparsely dotting the landscape reminders that life can spring even in the most surprising of places. As we roamed the markets, I felt like I was back in the Middle East wandering around the markets in Syria or Morocco. The leather, thanks to a prominent cow population, was beautiful, and the textiles even more incredible. Dinner was an amazing three-course meal complete with fresh (not cooked!) vegetables and more cheese than a girl could fantasize about (which I do, all the time).

The taste of fresh mozzarella still on my tongue, we left Maroua and headed to Rhumsiki, a small village nestled in the Mandara Mountains, just west of the Nigerian border. Rhumsiki Peak is perhaps one of the most photographed sites in Cameroon (…), and understandably so. As we drove into the village, Rhumsiki Peak exploded in the distance, not willing to covered by the impending dust. More than the Peak, travelers head to Rhumsiki in search of the crab fortune-teller. The fortune-teller sits patiently in his hut, conversing with his crabs, and giggling. As you ask your question, he pauses, lifts his crabs to his mouth, whispers to them, and then sets them in a bowl. You wait. And then he lifts the lid, ever so carefully, and examines the crabs’ movements. I asked the fortune-teller if my work in Cameroon would be successful. He smiled, and said the crabs had decidedly said yes! A new take on the eight ball.

Had the crab fortune-teller been able to see into the more present future, however, we might have avoided the next mishap. Whilst mounting horses to prepare for a trek, Mom slipped, and fell back onto her arm. In pain, though you would never be able to guess it, we went in search of a doctor. Who did not exist. Nor did a hospital/medical facility. Enter the not so healing healer. As Mom sat down, the not so healing healer examined her arm, and decided to rearrange the bones in her wrist. Meditated into a peaceful trance, if she was feeling any pain (which given the bone movement, I’m sure she was), you couldn’t see it. But that, children, is why women give birth, and not men. Bones sufficiently rearranged, potentially in the right places, potentially not, we stood up to leave. But no, the not so healing healer was not finished. So we sat down. He took Mom’s hand again. Spit on it. And then smiled. Thanks?

Confused, tired, and ready for a stiff drink, we headed back to the hotel where we finished the hotel’s dusty gin bottle and sat by the pool watching the stars blanket the crisp evening sky. In the morning we left Rhumsiki in search of our next village, Waza, famous for its game park situated between the docile dells of Nigeria, and the pleasant planes of Chad.

As we headed into the park we picked up our guide, who will herein be known as GuideMan since I have forgotten his name, is search of lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!—I had to). Our driver saw this time together in the car as a perfect opportunity to speak to me in Fulfude (which I don’t speak). Our guide soon discovered that I spoke Arabic (which I sadly have forgotten here), and used the trip as an opportunity to test out his Arabic. Mom decided that she would use her Swahili safari lingo, and we all passed a few French phrases around the car for good measure. From our olla podrida of languages, I was able to decipher that we saw animals and birds.

Being the fearless explorers that we are, we took our trusty Jeep into the brush in search of lion dens. I found it rather interesting that we would look for lions in their homes, but GuideMan assured us that we would be safe, so traipsing into their homes we went. Though we found no lions, I’m surprisingly comforted by this fact as I imagine an animal’s home is probably not a neutral meeting spot for a first encounter.

With the North sufficiently explored, (four days seemed to do a number on us), we headed back to the Grand South for our final adventure. Though I had booked a ticket from Maroua to Douala—because I guess you usually book tickets to the destinations that you want to end up in—I clearly meant to book a ticket to Yaounde. Luckily the airline had the foresight to preemptively interpret my thoughts, and they sent us to Yaounde, where I did not want to be, instead of Douala, where I wanted to be. Whilst waiting for the plane to land, we watched a man get taken from an ambulance, rolled into a rug, and then loaded onto the plane. This seemed like a very good beginning. And so we landed in Yaounde, and the airline company sent us on our way to Doula in a spiffy, air-conditioned VIP bus. It turns out that VIP is actually code for please let us abuse you (a rough translation from French), and we ventured onto one of the most hellish bus journeys known to man. Highlights included, but were not limited to, boarding the bus in a cattle like manner where not one but two women stepped on my head to get over me, crossing a bridge which had a dumpster strategically placed in the center because the other side of the bridge had fallen into the water, and air-conditioning that actually meant the window occasionally opened (again, maybe something was lost in translation) and resulted in me sitting for the majority of the ride in a pool of mine (read: everyone’s) sweat.

But as they say, all’s well that ends well. And so we finally arrived at our gorgeous hotel, the Birdwatchers Club, nestled into the Botanical Gardens of Limbe, home of Cameroon’s world famous (…) black beaches. In one of those are-you-fing-kidding-me kind of moments, we arrived at the hotel to find that the doors were locked and no one was there. Enter my fearless mother. She pried open a set of wood shutters, and then opened the glass into a room, which, incidentally, housed a sleeping set of vacationers. So she woke them up, and asked them to open the door. And graciously and groggily, they did. We raided the hotel’s peanut and beer collection, and sat on the deck recounting the day’s triumphs—mainly us still being alive. The rest of the beach journey was filled with sand, sun, and good fun (and lot’s of other really wonderful things which are not suitable for a blog of this level of sophistication).

So that’s it for travel tales. I’m finding it hard to settle back into my daily routine, which considering the fact that it did not exist has proven very, very difficult to find. Despite Africa’s best efforts, I’m still relatively healthy and debatably emotionally stable. Earlier in March, on a pleasant afternoon, I was doing my rounds on a moto and a bug flew into my eye. Normally this would not be problem, however, it just happened that I had another bug that lay dormant in said eye. Now I’m not a bug-mating expert, but something happened, and while I have no objection to facilitating amorous relations, I would prefer that they not take place in my eye. But apparently, I did not adequately communicate that to the bugs, and they had babies in my eye. An immediate, and you could say unfortunate, side effect of said babies was the constant twitch in my eye. Despite months of refusing marriage proposals and advances from my village men (there really weren’t that many…), I spent the good part of the week furiously winking at everyone. Rest assured, the babies are gone, and I’ve stopped winking.

If this entry hasn’t inspired you all to book a trip to Cameroon, then I don’t know what will! As the rains begin to fall, I’m starting lists of things I plan on learning when I’m confined to my house (e.g. US presidents, time-zones, general information concerning ocean currents, and tides, and continued country trivia). Email me if you have good ideas! Until the next time you hear from me, I hope you all are researching plane tickets and thinking about what to put in your next care package to send to me.