Maroua

Maroua is a less chaotic city than Yaounde, has almost no white people and is not cosmopolitan. It does not give an impression of much wealth but there is also less evidence of poverty (in the city itself) and there are fewer beggars. Its market is very lively and apart from this, shops are very small and restricted. There are not so many cars and motorbikes. The latter are the main form of taxi and often carry two passengers in addition to the taxi man. It is not very unusual to see a bicycle or motorbike carrying a huge load, even a bed, through busy traffic. Maroua is on the edge of a very large flat plain and has long straight streets lined by trees. It has a river which is dry at this time of the year but people dig holes in the river bed to get to water for washing themselves and their clothes.

I have spent a week training here at this stage and have liked Maroua’s atmosphere better than Yaounde’s although there is very little to do here besides going to restaurants and bars. In Yaounde there is night-life if you want it and we did spend an evening in a bar with very good music, much of it Cameroonian or of other African origin. Such entertainment is less in evidence here but the restaurants and bars are very lively. There are a few hotels, some of which have swimming pools.

Walking around Maroua at night is hazardous since there are virtually no street lamps. On one occasion I stepped into a hole just after crossing a bridge and tumbled down to the river bed. I was more or less OK but my trousers, shirt and mobile phone were not.

Journey North

After a week’s training in Yaounde, the group of volunteers split into those going to the English speaking North West and those going to the French speaking Far North (in Cameroon as a whole it is about 80/20 French/English and there are around 250 other languages, of which Pidgin is the most common in the North West and Fulfulde in the Far North). There had been ten of us, coming from Ireland (just myself), Wales, France, Canada, India, the Philipines and Zambia, and five of us headed north. The station was as chaotic as it could be but we managed to avoid the pick-pockets and swindlers of all sorts. We had a fifteen hour train journey over night with couchettes. Before it got dark we passed through very green countryside with lots of trees and rivers but by morning the countryside was more arid, there was much less vegetation and most of the river beds were dry. The countryside was sparsely populated and the dwllings were very basic, usually consisting of mud huts with straw roof within compounds surrounded with straw walls. The train stopped at a lot of stations where people with baskets of food on their heads frantically tried to make sales through the windows. Most purchases cost of the order of 20 cents and I doubt if the vendors averaged even one sale per train.

We arrived at another chaotic station in Ngaoundere and somehow found our bus. The first four hours to Garoua were not bad but then other passengers were packed in and it was impossible to move for the next five hours in suffocating temperatures. Also on this part of the journey there were huge potholes in the road and the bus driver tried to weave his way among them, with mixed success, somehow avoiding oncoming traffic which was similarly weaving all over the road. Our luggage was piled way up on top of the bus and it was hard to know how the bus did not topple over. We passed some broken-down buses but happily our’s did not have a problem. We had one stop so that the Muslims could say their prayers after meeting their calls of nature and washing themselves scrupulously (with no loos in the stations everybody, both male and female and of whatever creed, just did what they had to do with no cover).

Christians are in a majority in the south of Cameroon (although even in Yaounde the Muslims managed to wake me every morning at 4:30 with their call to prayer) but in the Far North they are in a majority. On the bus the radio played mostly Christian religious programmes (it was Sunday) interspersed with lots of updates on soccer matches.

As we approached Maroua the countryside became flatter but with sudden hills consisting of huge rocks which must have resulted from some eruptions (Cameroon still has active volcanoes and we saw some relatively fresh lava on our journey).

Somehow we arrived in Maroua intact and on time, much to the surprise of the VSO people who were used to over-night vigils on such occasions.

Pictures of Yaounde

Yaounde

I arrived in Yaounde Airport, Cameroon, on the evening of Saturday 8th March 2008, having flown from Dublin with an over-night in Paris. It turned out to be a great introduction to Cameroon since it was International Women’s Day which is celebrated in style in Cameroon. There were people everywhere, most of the women in colourful Cameroonian dress, and they were clearly in very high spirits. There had been parades and many festivities during the day and the open-air bars and restaurants were jammed. The journey from the airport to our hotel in Cameroon was my first introduction to the erratic style of driving which is endemic in Cameroon and as the bus weaved its way at break-neck speed through the traffic, with the horn blowing almost continuously, the many revellers who were wandering around the road had to fend for themselves.

The next morning my first impressions of Yaounde were of a lively city set in hilly countryside much greener than I expected. Most shops are little more than shacks and there are stalls everywhere selling various local foodstuffs, some cooked and ready to eat, and various other odds and ends. A lot of the stalls and shacks sell credits for mobile phones, provide facilities for making phone calls and occasionally provide services such as photocopying and internet access. The traffic is truly chaotic and dangerous and even when you are on the footpath you are in danger of being run down - it seems to be your own responsibility to watch out and dodge any cars or motorbikes that are using it. The one saving factor is that there are deep open drains at both sides of most streets which restrict where the cars can go, but these and other holes, all with no warning signs or barriers, present their own hazards.

Nearly all the shopping is done in the daily market, where they sell everything. I had lost the earphones for my ipod so I bought a new set there. After bargaining the price down from €4 to €1.50 I brought them back to my hotel only to find that they did not work. We went to the zoo which was really interesting since it covered wildlife that we could see in Cameroon. Even in Yaounde itself there were big birds of prey soaring overhead but I don’t know enough to decide whether they were kites, buzzards or eagles, or all of these. Also down the road from our hotel there were some trees full of bats the size of jackdaws which took off with great clamour at dusk.

Although there are signs of poverty everywhere, the people dress very well and are very friendly. Many of the dwelling areas look to us like shanty towns but I am not sure that they are that bad in reality. There was less begging than I expected but we were continuously warned about pick-pockets. The food is very good although it is usual to find that quite a number of things on the menu are not in stock. They have lots of fish, and chicken and beef are the main meats. They cook vegetables, such as plantains and yams, in several different and appetising ways. The beer is fine but I quickly gave up on the “wine” (in fact I have drunk less alcohol in the past ten days than at any time in the past forty years, but my consumption of water is massive).

The heat in Yaounde was not as bad as I expected. There was fairly high humidity, there were a few violent storms and mosquitos were a problem at night.

Introduction

These are my observations on Africa. They are written mainly as personal therapy and as an aide memoire but are made available to others in case some aspects of them should prove useful.