Nigeria was the last country I visited in West Africa. From there, I
went on to Cameroon, which feels a little West African and a little
Central African. It was a turning point in the trip. Things
certainly started to get harsher for us as a group!

CAMEROON
We arrived in Cameroon in the border village of Ekok. Due to the
rains in the previous 2 days, the road ahead of us was closed so we
had to stay the night at the border. Border towns are always
interesting places. This one is totally reliant on Nigeria for much
of the year because the road is impassable. The afternoon we spent in
Ekok was great. After watching the Africa Cup of Nations Senegal vs
Guinea on TV in which Senegal (my team in the 5 dollar per person
sweepstake) won, about half of us spent hours playing with the kids on
the school field on which we were parked and were sleeping the night.
There must have been about 100 children. They sung songs to us that
they were practising for the national youth day, we taught them
dances, played football and generally messed around, giving them piggy
backs etc. African children are so much fun. Obviously, very few of
them have an easy upbringing (1 in 3 in Niger, for example, die by the
age of 5) and get little or nothing in the way of material goods.
Given their large families, they also get little attention. An
African child with a childhood disease, for example, will get little
sympathy from his or her parents - suffering is a fact of life they
have to get used to! I think that most parents play with their
children very little and often treat them harshly, e.g. one man hit
his young son for shying away when I offered my hand to shake. Many
children are shy when white people meet them so that boy was acting
quite normally!. So playing with the children, even just swinging
them around and giving them piggy backs, chasing them etc. makes them
so happy.

Next day, we drove on the worst roads I have ever seen. It took us no
less than 9 hours to travel 19km, yes, that's about 3 times slower
than it could be walked at a leisurely pace! The muddy roads
consisted of holes, sometimes 3 metres deep with about a metre's depth
of water inside. Everyone except me (I had a recovering motorbike
exhaust burn on my leg) and 2 others, had to dig the truck out every
time it got stuck, use sand mats or temporarily drain the holes of
water with saucepans, sick buckets and washing up bowls. That could
be time consuming! And when we had local trucks stuck in front of us
(with the drivers doing very little to dig out!) and spilled loads, we
had to sort that out too. Our driver, Grant, was in his element. He
absolutely loves conditions like this. We all had fun too but if it
was like this every day, it could be tedious! The region we were in
is English-speaking, which is in the minority in Cameroon. The locals
claim the reasons their roads are so bad compared with the rest of
Cameroon is because they are not of the same tribe or share the same
language as the French-speaking President, Paul Biya. Having seen
some roads in other parts of Cameroon, read about the bias of Biya and
bearing in mind that the road is the major road connecting Cameroon
with its neighbour and most populous country in Africa, it did seem
strange. Apparently, the Chinese government offered to build a road
as long as the Cameroonian government paid compensation to the very
few people who would have to build new (traditional) homes a little
further away from the road. The Cameroonian government turned down
the offer. One man told us to spread the word to the world that
Anglophone Cameroon wants independence! Cameroon used to be a German
colony but after World War , half was given to the French and half to
the British. Part of the British half became part of Nigeria on
independence of Cameroon, leaving the French speakers in the majority.

We slept on the lawns of the police station in a village after that
long digging day.

Two nights later, still on quite poor roads, we bush camped under a
very impressive bridge that cost no less than 90 million pounds. I
didn't think it was really necessary either, especially given the bad
roads - it was just a bridge crossing a valley. What was so nice,
apart from the cool bridge, was the 20m high waterfall that we camped
near. It was also he night of our first very ill person - Kevin, from
Canada, had a high fever - it turned out to be malaria (case number 1
... do count them in the emails to come!!!).

Continuing through lovely Cameroonian scenery, we passed rubber,
banana and tea plantations before we arrived at the coastal town of
Limbe, which was colonial in feel. It was founded by a British
missionary in the 19th century and used as a base to campaign against
continuing slavery. Limbe was also home to the memorable bakery with
pizza where we ran to the shop, we were craving some Western food so
much! In Limbe, I visited the 3rd of the 3 Pandrillus (see Nigeria
email) projects, Limbe Wildlife Centre. Pandrillus bought the zoo
that used to be there and contained 200 animals in cages they could
not turn around in. Nowadays, the wildlife centre is hope to about 10
species of primates and a handful of other animals, all kept in
decent-sized enclosures. Again, they do some excellent breeding work
and great educational work with many visits from school children.
Unfortunately, the visitors' book was full of comments from locals
such as "this zoo does not have enough animals - it's boring". I
think they missed the point of the centre! It's even more worrying
given the amount of bush meat I saw in Cameroon - monkeys and all
sorts of other animals, dried or fresh being sold by the side of the
road.

From Limbe, I climbed Mount Cameroon, West Africa's highest mountain,
with a few others. The mountain is also an active volcano, which last
exploded in 1999 and 2000 whose craters are still visible when
climbing the mountain. Climbing was steep and a quite challenging.
First, we climbed through tropical forest, then savannah grasslands
before it eventually became rocky near to the top. It also got cold,
something that is quite alien to us. On the evening of the 1st night,
I was wrapped up in a jumper, jacket and woolly hat even though it was
only 12 degrees celsius. We really have adapted to the African
climate! We slept in huts with rats running underneath the platform
on which we slept. We hung up our food! At the summit (4095 metres /
13,000 feet, on the 2nd day, it was just 3 degrees celsius and really
windy - scarves, hats and gloves came out! From here, some people
descended the same day, while others, including me, went down a
sunnier, less steep but longer descent with a more varying scenery.
The 3 day walk included more forests, old lava flows and the 1999
crater. A 4 day walk would have included mountain elephants! 2 days
is really the quickest someone of good fitness can climb up and down.
Locals, however, participate in a Mount Cameroon race every February
with a large cash reward. The winner tends to run up and down in
about 3.5 hours, wearing jelly bean shoes!!! On the 2nd night, we
slept near to a spring. It was here, one week before, a hunter died,
having cut his leg while collecting firewood - one of our porters
wouldn't drink the spring water through fear that it has the hunter's
spirits inside! On arriving back to the base, locals greeted us with
"ashia", which in Pidgin English, is a recognition of the physical
task we have undertaken.
What was so great about the whole thing is that the walks are run by
an ecotourism organisation, set up in 1999 after too many tourists
were being left on the mountain side by unscrupulous guides. Today,
the organisation has over 800 tourists per year, pays the guides and
porters pretty well and the "profits" are spent in one village
surrounding the mountain each year to, for example, improve their
sewage systems or renovate a school. The porters tend to be hunters
or ex-hunters - they know the paths well but being employed in this
way means they have less time and less of a need to earn money through
hunting, which is obviously beneficial to much of the wildlife that
can be found on the mountain that is totally unique. This is an
example of tourism really benefiting local communities (it so often
has too little a positive impact).

On returning, Scott, a New Zealander, also had malaria. He was in a
hotel room on a drip with Kevin. That's 2 cases we're up to.

Next stop was Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon and Francophone
country. We stayed here for 5 days, on the lawn of a missionary, as
we waited for visas for Gabon, Congo and the Democratic Republic of
Congo. 3 passengers left us here (unplanned) as 2 didn't really like
the people on the truck (I would say they are not really the kind of
people for the trip) and one (Erin, the American girl), left as she
didn't really fancy going through Central African countries.

Yaounde is a large city (over 1 million people) and quite a nice place
to spend a few days, especially given its French patisseries and great
street atmosphere (common in Africa). I can't say our reception was a
particularly warm one here though. I remember the cultural shock the
Yaounde Hilton hotel brought me. Thoby and I went in to see what
Western civilisation looked like. My eyes lit up at the extravagence
and I felt cheap and dirty and out of place.

On one night, 4 of our people didn't come home. By the morning, we
became worried as the driver was one of the four and his partner
("tour" leader) has spent 6 years of travelling with him and he has
never done that before. As a French speaker, myself and Andi (tour
leader) went out looking for them. We knew they had gone to the
brewery to organise a tour for us (which we subsequently did and much
enjoyed) - all the security guards had seen them. At go-karting (was
supposed to be their next stop), noone had seen them. The police were
disinterested and unhelpful. The suggestion that they could ring
round to other police stations or call hospitals seemed like the most
outrageous suggestion of the century. We ended up at the British High
Commission, who found (after 2 hours of looking) that they had been
detained at a police station and then moved to immigration for having
no passport with them (passports were at the Gabon embassy). They
were being "interrogated" having been accused of being spies. Clearly
a threat to the national security of Cameroon! In reality, they were
asked no questions whatsoever and were just held just outside the
cells in a tatty, mosquito infested police station for 24 hours. They
were given no food or water (had a small amount of water with them)
but were grateful not to be in the packed cell they could see that had
a communal 20 litre bucket as a toilet in the centre of the room that
really stank. It could have been easy to escape but one other
prisoner tried that and was subsequently beaten!
As only one of the four detainees were British, 2 were Australian
(looked after by the Canadian Consulate) and one was a New Zealander,
it was up to the Canadians to go to immigration to release the 4 with
the passports we collected from the Gabon embassy. The British Vice
High Commissioner said that the reason they were not released is
because they did not offer enough money. The police do this now and
then (very few tourists in Yaounde but lots of white people in big
4x4s who are expats) to get some money for their own pockets. They
are supposed to ring the relevant embassy in this situation but never
do because that would only lead to their release without money. They
claim they cannot tell which embassy to ring if there are no
passports.
I have to say, the British and Canadians were brilliant in looking
after us and feel happy to know of their expertise when travelling.
Shame that New Zealanders are not represented though! The British
diplomatic service around the world has a database with copies of the
passports of all British passport holders - they can print out the
details and pictures when needed!

Meanwhile, an Irish independent traveller, also staying at the
Presbyterian missionary, had no more room in his passport and his
Cameroon visa was about to run out. He has no diplomatic
representation in Cameroon and so could not get a new passport. He
didn't want to fly home either! He was also put in prison in the
Central African Republic (a place one really should not go to!) on his
travels, accused of being a mercenary. After 2 days he was released
because other prisoners begged that he be let out as he pretended to
be crazy and insane and was causing too much disruption! Remember
that trick!

Politics
Cameroon is a peaceful country, although there are internal tensions
between the English and French speaking provinces. Also, a dispute
over ownership of the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula with Nigeria is
ongoing. The UN says it should be part of Cameroon but Nigeria
refuses to withdraw its troops. The President, Paul Biya, holds on to
power via rigged elections. The people do not have very much freedom.
The country is among the world's most corrupt.

----

Route change...from Cameroon we wanted to go to Chad, Sudan and
Ethiopia and then into Kenya. Due to the Darfur problem in Sudan, the
Chad/Sudan border is closed so a new route is needed. The Central
African Republic and travelling through much of Democratic Republic of
Congo is not a safe option. Instead we took a long route around to
Kenya, starting with Gabon...