Race to the Cameroon border
Hi BoBers,
After leaving Benue the good tar road turned to good gravel road turned to gnarly single track, which only motorbikes and the most patient of truckers dared to attempt. This all culminated in a day with over 2000m of elevation gain over loose gravel and dust. I only covered 50km and mostly pushed. But the air grew fresher and the sweat rash I’d developed slowly disappeared and the landscape opened up into beautiful broad grassy plains. The dusty, eucalyptus-lined roads wouldn’t look out of place in the outback in Australia. I arrived well after nightfall, with my phone strapped to my tent as a headlamp, invigorated by the renewed adventure of it.
One night I was hosted by Andrew, an evangelical priest who had recently been transferred into a tiny country town from Lagos. He had a big smile and a habit of responding with “that’s great!” multiple times to everything I said. His job wasn’t easy. In a small town the priest can have more power than the government. There was a half-finished church to complete and in that one evening three groups of people turned up with problems unannounced. The first, a teenage boy, shy and slightly trembling. He’d come to the town for work, but wasn’t being paid. He’d borrowed 500 Naira (30 US cents) to buy some soap to wash and couldn’t pay it back. Andrew listened while tapping at his ipad, gave him some food and told him to come with a family member the next morning to a funeral he was conducting.
For the Muslims, Ramadan was about to start and people had already started to fast to celebrate. This made finding food quite difficult as the region was remote and very Muslim. Early one afternoon, I arrived in a village hungry. The lone Christian let me cook noodles in his shop behind the counter. My stomach shrunk considerably over time and seemed to content itself with occasional sweets and energy drinks. I slept in a mosque one night where they didn’t speak English. Turns out I was eating in front of the guys on the first day of Ramadan! I was embarrassed, but they just smiled and offered me some food when they broke their fast later.
Sometimes, I ask people about local children’s stories. The men have been woeful so far, but I met a lovely woman who enthusiastically recounted the tale of a clever rabbit. I’ll very briefly summarise. The animal village wanted to have a town meeting outside of the village and had prepared a feast for afterwards. The rabbit said it had to run some errands and couldn’t come. When everyone left, the rabbit went and ate all the food and then put the shoes and droppings of one of the other animals outside the door. When everyone returned and saw their food gone, they blamed the animal and killed it. The moral of the story? Be clever like the rabbit if you want to get your way.
Crossing the border was straightforward, if a bit uncomfortable. The Nigerian immigration (one man) was friendly and stamped me out without problems. Not so in Cameroon. Officially, this border post hasn’t been open since COVID which meant no stamp or visa sticker. I was reassured it wasn’t a problem and told to get my visa Yaoundé, essentially travelling illegally. At the border I also met Adrien, a Swiss cyclist setting the record for a north to south traversal. He casually said he would be doing 300km per day!
Trying to save some money, I opted to withdraw it on the Cameroonean side directly, which is normally possible at the border. In this case, the nearest place was Banyo, 40km from the border. This meant riding a dusty, rocky road on an empty stomach for hours. When I finally arrived in Banyo, everything went wrong. My new SIM card’s internet didn’t work. The man’s son, who knew how to fix the internet, was breaking his fast and would come back in an hour. Two hours later the son returns and doesn’t know how to fix it either. I buy a second sim card, but the app denies multiple transfers. I was strangely calm, even though I was hungry. I can feel the months of accumulated travel changing me. Making me tougher. More patient. Eventually, I send money to the guy’s personal account and he gives me the cash for a fee. I buy myself fish and chips and find a hotel. Bliss.
Mildly illegally,
J&BoB
p.s. I went a bit overboard with the landscape photos. It was really beautiful.
