Cameroon

Cameroon was wet... very wet. Double-checking a map online to write this, I have just discovered that a village close to where I first stayed in the country is listed as one of the five wettest places on earth. It certainly was while I was there. Travel on unmetalled roads was slow and tedious as they turned into swamps. Travel on metalled roads was slow and tedious as the foot traffic which would normally have stayed in the verges strayed out onto the carriageway in an attempt to avoid the worst of the mud.

There were compensations however. Cameroon boasted a Guinness brewery under licence, the drink was still being sold under the “Guinness Is Good For You” slogan, supported by the traditional Toucan-advertising, and was available bottled in most bars and cafes. Coffee and chocolate are both significant cash crops. For a couple of days I indulged in a dark brown diet.

Being English was a significant advantage. The biggest (non-political) event in recent Cameroon history was the (soccer) world cup of 1990. Cameroon began gloriously by beating the reigning champions Argentina in the opening game, and were eventually knocked out in a quarter-final which finished 3-2 to England after two English penalties in extra time, and despite Cameroon probably objectively playing the better. Penalty decisions are invariably a source of controversy, and on discovering my nationality every citizen aged 13 or over wanted to discuss them in detail. Although football is by no means my preferred sport, fortunately I had watched the match. By the end of my time in Cameroon, I could discuss those penalties fluently on a second-by-second basis. It helped to pass the tedious journeys through the rains, and discussions that could switch mid-sentence from French to English – Cameroon has both as official languages, a legacy of the post first world-war partition of the previously German colony – helped to add to the time-passing value.

Being unable to orientate myself in the rain on arrival in Yaounde, the capital, I opted for a short taxi ride. As the taxi pulled away, someone shouted a warning through the window “that man has a knife monsieur, get out”. Travelling light has its advantages. (Nine kilogrammes, or about 20 pounds, of luggage including a sleeping-bag saw me around the world for a year. Compare your suitcase weight next time you check-in for your flight for a week’s holiday). At the next traffic pause I did get out with my bags, before the driver could react. An alternative taxi took me more sedately to the landmark of the inevitable capital-city-aid-agency-workers’ French supermarket, from where I was able to get my bearings and locate a place to stay. Tired from the wet journey and another Guinness, I fell asleep at dusk, only to be woken abruptly a couple of hours later by an incessant, and extremely loud, bass beat: the roundabout just along the street from my ground-floor room apparently doubled up as the Saturday overnight street disco. Dancing in the streets, OK, singing in the rain, maybe, but singing in the torrential and continuous downpour seemed a bit unreasonable. I was surprised the wiring didn’t simply fuse.

For the journey northeast, hopefully into a slightly less damp region, there was a train with magnificent new sleeping carriages. The ticket office only seemed to open for a few random minutes at a time, requiring most of a day spent in a nearby café spying on it before seizing the moment and sprinting over before the window shut again. I was lucky and secured a sleeper ticket, sharing a compartment with a junior air-force officer going home to visit his family. The majority of the remaining passengers in the carriage appeared to be well-to-do French tourists, heading to the drier north intending to shoot things in various private game reserves.

The border with the Central African Republic (CAR, or more euphoniously Centrafrique in French) was a slow, dripping clearing in the jungle, with the usual queues of patient trucks negotiating passage. The CAR border guards evidently felt the need to supplement their income, and had devised an unusual way to do so. A medical checkpoint had been added to the usual steps of checking documents and looking hopefully through luggage in search of confiscate-able items of decent resale value. Yellow fever vaccination? I had the standard issue certificate. How about cholera? The nurse had refused to inject me with it, pointing out that the vaccine was now reckoned to be useless and probably actually increased susceptibility. She had, however, been prepared to salve her conscience and issue an internationally valid certificate of cholera vaccination after injecting me with a microscopic quantity of saline solution; as she pointed out, it probably increased my immunity when compared with receiving the vaccine itself. Then how about meningitis? There was no recognised documentation for this, and it must have brought in a steady income for the border guards. I was equal to it: I had a letter on impressively headed notepaper, bearing the names of multiple doctors and signed with a dramatic flourish. The guards admitted defeat after a few minutes half-hearted argument regarding translation (meningitis in English = méningite in French, close enough for victory to be mine), and I was waved through.

Queueing at the border

They were missing a trick: there was one vaccine which I definitely did not have. When the nurse had asked for a list of countries I planned to visit on my trip, I pointed out that I didn’t really know. In the end we settled on a list which seemed to promise a comprehensive portfolio of standard travel immunisations. She then scanned a lengthy printout: “are you planning to visit southern Tanzania?” Maybe, maybe not, I shrugged, and asked why. “Do you want the bubonic plague vaccine?