Journey to Foumban

I took holidays in the first half of August, spending most of the time in Foumban in West Cameroon. August is not a good time for holidays in Cameroon since it is at the height of the rainy season but part of my logic was that anywhere is better than Maga in the rainy season. I have been lucky in that the rainy season was late this year and there were no really bad rains before I left. Such rains can make it impossible to go outside one’s house for several days because everywhere there is mud up to the knees. We have experienced some very violent storms in Maga with extremely heavy rains, making the local roads impassable and flooding the village, but fortunately they were usually followed by a sunny spell which dried the roads sufficiently for travel (one theory is that there is a progressive reduction in rainfall due to global warming, but on the other hand, Chad which is on the other side of the Logone, has had severe flooding this year). The more lasting effect of such storms has been disruption of the electricity supply, since poles are blown down or simply snap in the wind or are hit by lightning, also with disruption of the water supply (since the pumps are electric). On average we have had power and water around one-quarter of the time over the past few months. However I was very lucky with my holidays in that I left and returned to Maga in fine weather (there was a lot of rain while I was away) and the electricity was turned on a few hours before I returned.

Having escaped from Maga to Maroua I headed south to Yaounde and then to Douala. The journey to Yaounde was the reverse of my original journey to the Far North and the contrast was remarkable in that what had been virtual desert had turned green and rivers that had been dry were now flowing strongly. As we headed further south towards Yaounde the vegetation became lush and exotic. This intensified to something like tropical rain forest on the onward journey to Douala, which is close to an area reputed to have the greatest amount of rainfall of anywhere in the world.

Douala is the economic capital of Cameroon and is bigger than Yaounde. It is at the mouth of the Wouri river and has a large port. It is very industrial and is not a pleasant place in which to stay. Many of its districts have high levels of crime and are very dangerous. After spending two nights there we went to the bus station which serves West and North West Cameroon. When we arrived at the bus station a swarm of aggressive representatives of bus companies descended on us and practically fought each other over us. Eventually the winner took our luggage and put it on top of a bus and told us to get in. Such buses only leave when they are full and it became apparent that the bus was not filling quickly. Whenever prospective customers were spotted our driver started the engine and drove back and forth as if the bus was about to leave, so as to panic them into jumping in, but it took six hours to fill the bus. The journey took another six hours but we found out later that there are other, more expensive, bus companies whose buses leave at fixed times from central Douala, which do not pack so many people into the buses and which have fewer stops along the way.

North of Douala we drove through fertile countryside with lots of fruit and vegetables, including mangoes, pineapples, grapefruit, avocados, extensive plantations of palms, bananas and papayas, corn, millet, ground nuts and cotton. As we drove into the hills of West Cameroon we got an impression that life there is much easier than in the Far North. The fertile land supports many villages, the houses are reasonably solid rather than mud huts and cars and buses are much more plentiful and in much better condition.

If one looks at the map, it appears that one can get to Foumban much more directly by road from Ngaoundere. However the road is so bad that it is only passable in the dry season from November to February, and then with difficulty and some danger from bandits (even the bus on the busy road from Maroua to Ngaoundere had armed guards). One has to go south to Yaounde or Douala and then go back north to Foumban. The road from Ngaoundere to Yaounde is also bad (though passable most of the time) and most people and goods go by train. The effect of the bad roads is that the North and Far North are almost cut off from the South, West and North West. One consequence is that there is a far narrower range of fruit and vegetables in the North and Far North, the quality is lower and prices are much higher. Much of the fruit in the Far North comes from Nigeria. A good road from Foumban to Ngaoundere would open up the North and Far North to the foodstuffs of the West and North West, and also allow some trade in reverse, e.g. of rice.

There was an amazing number of police roadblocks between Douala and Foumban at which we had to stop, even more than in the Far North. In the latter case there is some financial exchange between the bus driver and the policeman (at least four times on the 80 kilometer journey between Maga and Maroua). In the West the bus probably would have passed a test of road worthiness and the documentation, including a list of passengers with their identity card numbers, was in order. Perhaps there were other vehicles for which it was worthwhile for the police to check, or perhaps in both cases the police act as a deterrent to bandits. It is possible also that the trouble in the neighbouring Bakassi Peninsula was the reason for the vigilance (the Bakassi Peninsula was disputed between Cameroon and Nigeria and although the International Court of Justice ruled that Nigeria should cede it to Cameroon in 2002 (the hand-over formally happened on 14th August 2008) there are armed groups which still resist Cameroonian rule, causing ongoing conflict in which over 100 people have died in the past month).

On the last leg of the bus journey, from Bafoussan to Foumban, a man got on the bus and gave a sales pitch on a number of Chinese medicines. In each case he looked for 15,000 fcfa but due to lack of response quickly dropped his price to 500 fcfa, sometimes adding bonus products at this price. The most popular product was a liquid which you held in your mouth for 10 minutes and which did all sorts of wonderful things such as healing gum disease and bad teeth. Somebody asked if it was any good for ear aches and the salesman immediately launched forth on the great benefits that it brought to the ears. I think it is indicative of the African belief in quick remedies that most people on the bus bought this product. His last product was a cream that is rubbed on the genitals to cure or prevent sexually transmitted diseases. There were a few takers for this product but it was not clear whether they needed a cure or just prevention.

When in Foumban I wanted to visit some VSO volunteers in two villages around 80 kilometers further north. I was told that the road is very dangerous in the rainy season, but what really killed the idea was news that some people had just been killed by bandits on that road.