February 26, 2007

I’ve sprung my surprise so it’s time to come clean about why my postings have fallen off the last month or so.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m back in New York, and I’m going to be here for a while. After nearly 19 months, my African adventure is over. I didn’t write much about this before because I wanted to surprise people when I arrived. Why? Because I’m a deeply disturbed individual.

After one scream that almost blew out my Dad’s eardrum and two people saying, “What month is this?” all I can say is, mission accomplished.

After getting through the initial decision to come home, making the decision about when to leave was surprisingly easy. I was just sitting around one day, after discovering that no editors cared about prisoners taking over Cameroon’s jails or the Chinese president’s visit, and knew that something needed to change. Bec recognized it too. We sat down that evening and both said, essentially at the same time, “I need to go home.” (Actually, she said, “It’s time for you to go home.”) That was mid-January or so. I was on a plane Feb. 15. It feels good to be back, getting started on my career again.

We figured it would be fun to cross into my 30s in Cameroon, because Bec was able to organize an absolutely perfect birthday party that included sitting on an open verandah watching the sun go down with dear friends I was saying goodbye to. We then made a trek to Chez Harris, a nightclub we like. We listened to music (that was unfortunately interrupted by MTN, the South African telephone conglomerate, office party), ate our favorite Cameroonian dish, chicken DG (DG stands for director general. Essentially, it’s a mercantile General Tso’s chicken) and just get one last blast of Cameroon. It helped that the birthday actually fell on a Saturday. I can’t thank Rebecca enough for throwing such a wonderful 30th birthday party, and under such melancholy circumstances.

We also wanted to spend Valentine’s Day together, and that worked out perfect, although it was slightly downbeat as well since I was heading out the next day.

I won’t regale you with tales of my flying, only to say it was a little more adventurous than I would have liked. Air France changed the baggage weight limits and we didn’t know, so I had to repack at the airport. And they were rude about it, I guess to prepare me for France. I watched “The Queen” from Yaounde/Douala to Paris, but was stuck with bad movies on a Delta flight from Paris to New York. Why don’t American airlines have the personal video screen, the greatest advancement in aviation since birds developed feathers?

I fell victim to a projectile vomiting event, although it was more that I was in the outer reaches of the blast radius, with a little landing on my right hand. I felt bad for the kid. He couldn’t have been more than 10. He was Italian, so he had the language thing going for him. Plus, other than having trouble with takeoff and landing, he was perfectly behaved. He sat around talking to his Mom and Dad, in Italian and I noticed an extra set of eyes on my laptop when I was watching Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup finals, when the Rangers won the Cup. Since it doesn’t look like they’ll win one for a while, thanks for the memories, boys.

On behalf of my jumpy-stomached friend, I ask this question. If a landing is bad enough that at least one passenger loses his breakfast, lunch and snack, does the pilot deserve applause? I’m against applauding a landing in general. But I definitely think that if someone boots, the pilot should be met with indifference. I’ll reserve booing for more serious flight difficulties I’d rather not write about.

I’m getting used to the cold, sort of. There’s snow on the ground outside. I can see it on my parents’ deck. It was 28 degrees Celsius when my flight landed in Douala (that’s roughly 90 Fahrenheit, and extremely humid). It was 28 degrees Fahrenheit when I landed in New York, with wind. That was a bit of a shock.

I feel like I should give some sort of wrap up on Africa. But honestly, my feelings haven’t changed that much from when I marked the one-year point. Maybe this is the best way to describe my African adventure: It was like living any place else. There were good times and bad times, things I loved and things that made me crazy. There were exciting moments and boring moments. But during my time in Rwanda and Cameroon, with brief stops in Uganda and Burundi, all those experiences were more intense. The happy moments were happier, the bad moments worse. Is that good or bad? I don’t know. It’s going to take some time to figure that out.

What I do know is that I’m extremely glad that I had this experience, and I think it was good for me. I thank Rebecca for letting me join her (and I can’t wait for her to rejoin me). And I don’t think I would change anything that happened.

Thanks for reading this and sharing in my experiences while I was away. I really appreciate it. It’s good to be home.

February 2, 2007

Hey there, remember me?

I know at least one person has been asking why there haven’t been any new posts in this space over the last few weeks. While I’d love to say that it’s because I’ve been out traveling around Cameroon, the reality is far different. The truth is I haven’t written anything recently because there hasn’t been much to write about.

That changed today when Bec and I made another attempt to get our residence permits. I know the first question that came to your minds after reading that: Evan, why do you need a residence permit? You’re leaving soon. Why put yourself through the aggravation of dealing with the Cameroonian bureaucracy?

Answer: If I didn’t try to get this done, I wouldn’t have had the chance to go to the Justice Ministry’s Central Index Card Office, clearly a victim of bilingualism gone bad. To be honest, I’m not sure what a better translation would have been. I was so distracted by the Central Index Card Office that I failed to notice the French.

To my disappointment, there were no index cards in the Central Index Card Office. I had envisioned stack upon stack of white and pink cards all around the room, like some pack rat’s apartment. Instead, it was an open room with a few desks and bookshelves stacked with bundled legal documents. “Now we know why the courts are so backlogged,” Bec said.

In theory, we should have had our residency permits within the first three months of our arrival. But then the person at the desk decided (I say decided because the person was actually breaking Cameroon’s agreement with CRS and possibly the country’s laws) we’d have to wait six months. Six months came while we were in New York, so we couldn’t get our cards then. So we’re getting them now.

It’s hard for me to overstate how unnecessarily complex and slow the Cameroonian bureaucracy is. In some ways, it’s the perfect system for low-level flunkies to profit from. “I’m sorry, you needed that document signed at the office in the other ministry. But I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement about how we can make this go faster.” CRS doesn’t have to prostrate itself like that – it’s written in their agreement to work here – which means the organization has to wade through the muck to get anything done.

I think that Mathieu, the driver who has been in charge of getting our documents done, has been to seven offices to get two copies of one document. The reason Bec and I had to go today is that the man at the desk with the hand-written RECEPTION sign – a man with whom I hold one thing in common. I would have run out of room on the small piece of poster board where he wrote the word also – could verify that we were the people whose faces appear in our passports. We didn’t have to sign any papers. We didn’t even have to say hello. We just had to stand there. So we took the chance to discuss, in English, how Cameroon ranks among the world’s worst countries for doing business, the number of steps it takes to get anything official done and how if people are so afraid of Chinese doing better business in Cameroon, maybe Cameroonians should try to compete against them. That last bit will make sense in the second part of this post.

Poor Mathieu had to rewrite a hand-written letter requesting the documents needed to get our pink cards. Apparently, the letter was only in one of our dossiers. Each separate dossier needed its own letter asking for the forms. That it was a joint request hardly mattered. To top it off, there was no paper in the Central Index Card Office, so Mathieu had to go searching for more.

Although we thought we’d be getting our residency cards today, it turns out it’ll be Tuesday or Wednesday. I’m not holding my breath, since we were told we’d be getting our cards two weeks ago. I’ll probably get mine the day I fly home. No worries. It’ll just go in my collection of interesting identification documents, along with the Ugandan and Cambodian press passes.

The only worry I’ve got is that our passports are currently somewhere inside the Central Index Card Office. I have this nightmare vision that they are currently being wrapped up into one of the bundles and slapped onto a bookshelf, never to be seen again.

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As some of you may have known, and most of you probably didn’t, Chinese President Hu Jintao was in Yaoundé earlier this week. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know that. It didn’t even make the front pages of most Cameroonian newspapers.

Hu is on an eight-country tour of Africa. Cameroon was his first stop and he left behind $100 million in trade deals, give or take a dollar or two. Unfortunately, he did not sign any trade deals with me.

I pitched this story to a couple of outlets, with, as you can see, no luck. This, of course, led to a new version of the famous Buddhist riddle: If the Chinese president comes to visit Cameroon, and no one outside cares, did he really visit? An American friend who is a photographer tried to get into the events where Biya and Hu would chat, meet and greet, but the Deputy Minister of Information told him, “It’s very late. Maybe we can do some business.” The Deputy Minister then asked for CFA 50,000 (around $100). Ben got up and left.

There are billboards all around Yaoundé showing Biya and Hu shaking hands, probably at a meeting earlier in Beijing. They’re quite buddy-buddy, don’t you know. I’m sure in briefings, Hu asked questions like, “what’s that guy’s name again?” There are also Chinese flags all around town. The streets in our neighborhood were completely shut down on Wednesday, which made walking easier and safer. I didn’t have any complaints, except for the soldiers with their rifles cocked and ready to rock.

What I’ve discovered from talking to people is that many Cameroonians don’t actually like the Chinese presence in their country. It’s not that they have any problems with Chinese because they’re Chinese. It’s because a lot of Chinese fill the same economic niche.

Chinese construction firms bring their own unskilled labor to do a lot of the building, jobs Cameroonians could fill. That’s a legitimate gripe. But Chinese also do a lot of the small trading, down to selling little sugar donuts (which have a proper French name that I can’t spell) in the markets. That’s where I kind of draw the line at legitimate griping. If you don’t like that the Chinese are outselling you in the markets, make a better donut that people want to buy. Compete. Don’t complain.

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The Chinese president’s visit caused my first “Listen, you whippersnapper” moment. That seems appropriate since I’m turning 30 next week. I went into the Internet café with the cappuccinos on Wednesday afternoon to get out of the house. There were some American college students who are studying in Cameroon in the café.

In amongst them was a large redhead. He asked what I was doing in Cameroon. I explained Bec’s job, and my attempts at journalism.

“I’ve got a story for you,” he said.

“Really, what’s that?”

“You know the Chinese president is visiting here today.”

“Get right outta town.”

“Yeah. He is. He’ll be passing by here any minute.”

“I pitched that story already. No one wanted it. It’s really a story when he goes to Liberia, because it’s Liberia, and Sudan, because China’s the only country that can really stop the Darfur violence.” [Did you know that China gets around 85 percent of Sudan’s oil?]

“Yeah, but people will care when the oil in the Bakassi Peninsula starts going to China.”

And that’s when it happened. That’s when I turned into a grumpy old man.

“Listen, I’ve been doing this a little while,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m a political science student.”

“Oh yeah? Trust me, the people that are telling you about this stuff aren’t giving the good information to a poli sci student from Dickinson College. No one knows how much oil is in Bakassi. In fact, no one thinks Cameroon has control of the oil in Bakassi. The rumor is that much of that oil stayed in Nigeria’s possession. And really what matters is what companies are doing the exploration. It looks like French and American companies, so how much of that goes to China? Probably not all that much.”

I didn’t like doing it, but I comfort myself by reminding myself that this guy was really beyond smug.

He then went outside to wait for the Chinese president’s motorcade to pass. It never did. I’m glad I didn’t follow his story lead.

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And finally, I may have gotten to the bottom of the Christmas crime rush in Yaoundé. It turns out, according to a friend who’s lived in Cameroon for nearly four years, that many of Cameroon’s coffee and cocoa brokers live here. For some reason, they get almost all their money at the end of the year. So for a couple of weeks, they’re rich. And within those couple of weeks, almost all of that money gets spent. So, with all of that extra money floating around, it gets tempting for thieves.

Huh. That’s the most logical thing I’ve heard about Cameroon in a while.

January 11, 2007

One dismaying side effect of the prison guard strike I wrote about last week is over 100 prisoners apparently escaped from the Yaoundé Central Prison, which houses the worst of the worst in the city as well as many less serious offenders – the jaywalkers, the ID-less and the public urinators. Actually, only not having an ID can get you arrested, if you can’t pay. If the other two were punishable offenses, I’d be The Fugitive. (Kidding, mostly.)

This does not mean that the worst of the worst escaped from the Yaoundé Central Prison, just that a small group of the over 4,000 prisoners got out. There have been reports of a bump in crime – I hesitate to say crime wave, as friends have described it – although it’s unclear whether the bump is simply an extension of the Christmas rush that usually happens around this time of year.

I’m not totally sure how the prisoners got out. Maybe the gendarmes and police didn’t get there fast enough. If that happened, then probably a lot more would have escaped. Cameroonians are quite industrious. It’s entirely possible that the escapees entered into some sort of agreement with the surrounding police where everybody, except victims, benefits. Have I mentioned that Cameroonians are quite industrious? One other option is the escapees simply slipped through during all the commotion. If I had to, I’d bet the third option.

While some of the increased criminal activity has been the usual for Yaoundé, there has been at least one deadly incident. Burglars murdered a French woman and injured her companion when she discovered them in her house. There were reports of thugs driving around pretending to be supervisors from one of the many private security agencies, attempting to get into an apartment building. Fortunately, the guard on duty didn’t recognize them and wouldn’t open the gate. He was pelted with stones, according to the report, until they were either chased away or gave up.

As I said, I’m not sure whether any of this is tied to the prison break. Only the murder stands out as something out of the ordinary, and that just seems to me like an extremely unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The attempted break-in the guard stopped isn’t frequent, but it’s not uncommon either. Sometimes they’re even successful. Bandits will wait for someone to pull up in a car and then follow the car into the gate. We get regular security updates from the American Embassy, and once every couple of months a home invasion, attempted or successful, appears.

The other thing that makes me hesitate to call what’s happening in Yaoundé a crime wave is that the incidents are happening at night. If these sorts of things were happening in the middle of the afternoon, it would be a cause for serious concern. They’re not. We take very good care of ourselves, and will reevaluate our nighttime excursions as needed.

As you can imagine, I was totally calm, cool and collected after I read about the prison break and the potentially accompanying crime bump. I didn’t do anything like make sure the door was locked or think about never going outside again, except to go to the airport. Nope. Not me. Never.

Okay, maybe a little.

“Man, this hardly seems fair,” I said to Rebecca when we spoke on the phone a little while after I read the e-mails with the crime reports.

“What?”

“The prison break.”

“Well, the murder rate and crime rate are higher in New York.”

That’s a good point. The only quibble I had with that statement was the certainty with which it was said, but that’s only because I’ve never seen crime statistics for Cameroon and probably wouldn’t believe them anyway. One never trusts a number put forth by the Cameroonian government (or just about any government, including ours).

When we lived on 83rd Street, someone tried to push his way into our apartment as I closed the door. Fortunately, I knew he was there before he started to push. All those years forcing attackmen outweighing me by 50 pounds away from the goal came in handy. I’ve had my wallet and cell phone stolen from a gym locker in New York. We listened to a podcast the other night about a Park Slope writer who was shocked by being mugged in his island, um, neighborhood.

I feel safe on the streets here, especially during the day. One benefit of having a corrupt and slightly less than competent police force is that the public bands together. Bec says the same thing happened in Uzbekistan. When a known miscreant walked through the market, vendors would start yelling thief. I don’t think that happens here. In fact, Cameroonians have a worrying penchant for mob violence when dealing with thieves and other criminals. It’s not abnormal to hear of a suspected thief being cut to shreds by an angry crowd. I’m reasonably confident that a thief would suffer some horrible fate if he or she went after me in a crowded area.

Stop me if I told you this one before, but I think it’s a good example of what I’m talking about. My friend Blake was in an Internet café in Accra, Ghana’s capital, in the evening. In walked a man with a machete with the intention of robbing the café and everyone in the place. Recognizing this would be bad for business, the staff member at the front desk reached for the panic button – his very own machete. Other staff members pulled out machetes as well. They proceeded to chase the wanna-be thief out and down the street. The customers stayed and paid; whether out of fear or appreciation I can’t say. But do you see what I mean about people staying together?

At the same time, I also know stuff happens. To a certain extent, Bec and I and every other expatriate here is a target. We have a lot more than most Cameroonians (or Rwandans or Ghanaians or Ugandans). Usually what this means is that people try to sell us stuff we don’t want, or be our friends or ask us for stuff we can’t or won’t give. On rare occasions, it might mean something else. So if anyone wants the car or the money or the cell phone, they can have it. We’ll get another. Just stay calm, give up the item and get on with life. I think that’s the same everywhere, though, not something that is unique to most of Africa, especially Cameroon.

But getting back to the crime bump, I’ll concede that the crime rate is higher in New York. However, I guarantee that the prison break rate is far lower in New York.

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The only home invasion we’ve suffered came in the form of wildlife. Remember when I said that the only big animals we’ve seen since we’ve seen in Africa were cockroaches? Well, that was before we saw what we saw crawling around our bathroom the other night.

I was sitting on the couch in the living room while Bec was washing up in the bathroom.

“Umm, there’s a huge spider in the bathroom. I know it’s bad luck to kill them, but this is really big,” she said, gamely attempting to hold it together and her face covered in suds.

“Sure. Let me get the spray.”

I went in and didn’t see anything. I had my doubts about the size of this spider. Bec is one of the bravest people I know, but bugs and spiders aren’t her thing. We’ve set it up so that I take care of insects and the occasional arachnid, while she gets everything else. So that when there’s a cockroach, I usually kill it. When there’s a crocodile, Bec’s on it. This seems fair to me.

After we watched some TV, I went back into the bathroom. And then I saw it. I had never seen anything quite like this spider. I could clearly see the shape of its body – the bulbous rear, the small head, the bends in the legs – without bending over. The light brown markings on its dark brown back were visible. I swear I saw its mouth. To paraphrase George Costanza, it was 10 feet long if it was an inch.

I was afraid that one of us would get caught in the spider’s web and become dinner. I’m sure it could have taken Bec down in one bite. I’m a bit meatier. We were pretty sure it wasn’t poisonous because we didn’t remember reading about venomous spiders in Cameroon. At least that’s what we told ourselves.

Most importantly, something that big should be paying rent. But I was afraid to make the request.

So it had to be dealt with. I unloaded probably a quarter can of bug spray on the spider, and it kept moving. I was afraid that it was angry and advised Bec not to get up to pee in the middle of the night at any cost. We tucked our mosquito net tight to make sure it couldn’t get into the bed.

I’m pleased to report that it worked and we are safe. There was no spider attack over the course of the night, and we didn’t see any yesterday. Now let’s see if our luck holds.

January 8, 2007

I’ve wiped off the self-pity I was wallowing in, and after a long shower I’m ready to get started with enjoying what are probably my last two-and-a-half months in Cameroon.

It’s time to make an effort to see parts of the country I haven’t seen, and to meet people I haven’t met. I think I’ll enjoy this.

Of course, I still haven’t bought a plane ticket, so I reserve the right to change my mind.

Thank you for indulging me.

Just so no one is worried about me, here’s a link to something I contributed to the Sub-Saharan African Roundtable. It’s a more fleshed-out version of what I wrote about election reform in Cameroon. If you’re at all interested in Africa, you should check out the other stories here.

Before you read my post, Samuel Eto’o is Cameroon’s national football star. He is a striker for FC Barcelona and his face is everywhere here – on fabric patterns, on magazines, on advertisements. There are songs about him and he is always on television somewhere in the country. I just wanted everyone to get the reference.

And while I’m at it, here’s a link to an interesting Cameroonian blogger. If you want a much better understanding of life, politics and history in Cameroon than I can give, you’ve got to read Dibussi Tande. There is a far more informed critique of the penal procedure code I wrote about last week a few items in.

In other news, the technician was able to fix the transformer for our Game Cube. Only in the developing world would someone try cutting through the welded and bolted plastic cover to get at the delicate electrical components inside. That’s just what Desiree did, and it worked.

Unfortunately, within two minutes of plugging it in, the transformer buzzed, then smelled, then started to emit white smoke. So there goes that. I think the Game Cube is coming home with me. Bec will keep the Gameboy. We’re so mature.

January 3, 2007


Since this is my first post of the New Year, I figured I would give an update on reform efforts in Cameroon. And guess what. They’re encouraging.

The new Cameroonian penal code went into effect on New Year’s Day. Okay, is the yawn over? Get that last stretch out…OK…. Here we go.

I know, penal reform sounds incredibly boring. Every once in a while when someone describes the whole process to me, I feel like grabbing my pillow. But for thousands of Cameroonians languishing in criminally neglected and overcrowded jails, this is potentially huge news.

How bad are Cameroonian jails? Guards in several prisons around the country went on strike over the conditions last week, and they’re the ones in charge. The strike in Yaoundé ended violently yesterday, with gendarmes and police storming the city’s Central Prison to retake control from the prisoners. The gendarmes and police took the opportunity to beat up on the guards and arrest several of them. Two prisoners were killed.

The Cameroonian legal system was, like the rest of the country, divided between British and French until recently. Essentially, habeas corpus rights came into effect countrywide on Jan. 1. They had previously existed only in the Anglophone provinces, in penal codes modeled on British law, while in the Francophone provinces, the government could just hold a person until they got around to holding a trial, or the person paid a large “fee” to get out. This system was modeled on French law. Hey wait a minute. Isn’t France the country that says it’s the birthplace of human rights? I guess I can’t say anything, since the Bushies are doing their best to get rid of the sacred writ in the United States. You know, he’s making it really hard to ride my high horse.

But I digress.

Anyway, under the new penal code, a prisoner can petition to be let out of jail if their cases aren’t heard within a prescribed period of time. I’m not sure how long that is, but I am sure that it will mean people picked up for little things like not having their ID cards on them probably won’t be sitting in jail for months.

But as always, there’s a catch in Cameroon. In order for someone to benefit from their newly granted legal rights, they will have to get their documents from office to office in the Ministry of Justice and prison authority. As you can imagine, this is tough to do from inside prison. There aren’t enough lawyers in Cameroon to help out every prisoner, and none of the lawyers work pro bono anyway. Most of the prisoners are poor; otherwise they would have bought their way out already. CRS, I know, is working to set up a pro bono legal service to help prisoners. But that will take time. There is a danger that people will be stuck in prison unnecessarily even with this new law (actually, that’s a guarantee). But at least the new law is there, and there is a chance for people to exercise their rights.

The second reform is electoral reform. (Why does that sound like something from Passover?) I’ve written earlier about the election reform laws snaking their way through Cameroon’s parliament. Right before Christmas, Biya and his supporters submitted their own proposals for electoral reforms, including a new electoral commission. Except their idea was to just have the president appoint some people to a temporary commission with the chance for him to renew their posts if they do a good job.

That doesn’t sound very independent to me, and it didn’t to most Cameroonians. Parliamentarians, including some from Biya’s party, diplomats and the press all cried foul. What usually happens in a situation like this is that the government ignores the outcry and does whatever it wants. Hey, it’s worked so far.

But something different happened this time. Biya caved, albeit quietly. They submitted a new law with an independent electoral commission that will be in place prior to this spring’s parliamentary elections. Not many people heard about it.

So, does this mean freedom is on the march here in Cameroon? Maybe. Cameroonians will tell you that the government is extremely good at giving up just enough to look like it’s working towards reform while still maintaining its power and the status quo. It’s a shell game, and the government usually wins.

This give on electoral reform may be different, though, since some of Biya’s supporters went against the president. That the government hasn’t trumpeted its magnanimity also makes me think there’s a bit more to this change than the usual giving an inch, taking a mile. If they were so happy with what was accomplished, why didn’t the Cameroonian authorities make a big deal about the new law? They certainly were pleased to tell Cameroonians about the law they liked but failed. I doubt that there will be a speedy opening up of Cameroonian politics, but at least there’s movement.

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All of this political and penal news came a distant second in the minds of most Cameroonians this last week.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Cameroonians know how to party.

Our New Year’s weekend was tame. On Saturday we went to pick up a TV and DVD player. We got tired of watching movies on our computers, and we wanted to finally plug in our Game Cube.

We got home and plugged in the TV. That worked, no problem. Then we plugged in the DVD player. It played most of what we had, but two things it didn’t were Dodge ball and all the Star Wars movies. That’s a deal breaker, so yesterday we returned the cheap, Chinese knock-off Samsung and bought a more expensive real Samsung DVD player. Star Wars and Dodge ball, I am happy to report, are now watchable, although some might debate that about Star Wars Episodes I, II, and III.

Then we plugged in the Game Cube. We attached it to a power transformer, and then the transformer to a power regulator. We figured we were safe. I then popped in NHL 2005, and it appeared on the screen. Excitement ensued, although I smelled the end of my journalism career.

“Do you smell something burning?” Bec asked.

It’s not rare to smell things burning in Yaoundé. People are constantly burning their trash, even rubber. So I didn’t think anything of it.

“I think it’s coming from outside,” I said.

I walked out of the room for a second, and then back in. And then I heard a small . And then I saw the black smoke coming out of the Game Cube’s power cord. That’s that, although we think it’s only the cord and not the box. The Indian guys we bought our DVD and TV from seem to think that they know a technician in Yaoundé who can fix it. Developing world knowledge. It’s fantastic.

Bec and I and the Kribi crew went to our friend Jean-Baptiste’s house for a New Year’s lunch on Sunday. JB’s wife, Jacqueline, fixed a scrumptious and huge meal of traditional Cameroonian foods. We had fried chicken, beef brochettes, salad, potato soup, carrots, greens, two massive fish, pineapple cake and watermelon. I might be forgetting something, but my stomach sure wasn’t. But the company, as always, was the highlight. Actually, the rooster crowing angrily in the yard when the chicken was served may have been the highlight. It’s a tough call.

Bec and I then spent New Year’s Eve playing board games at the house of her boss, Jennifer. At midnight, and this is where the knowing how to have a good time comes in, fireworks shot up in the distance, over the Nlongkak traffic circle. It was actually quite beautiful. We could see them from the verandah. Apparently, there were small displays like that all around Yaoundé, sponsored by the government. And Cameroonians were out dancing until 10 the next morning.

I know, bread and circuses. But what’s wrong with people having a good time every once in a while?

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Finally, a new year brings many changes. And a big one is coming for me.

Wow, who knew this would be hard to write? I always thought I'd look forward to say what I'm about to say, but I can't say I am.

It looks like I’m coming home in March, around St. Patrick’s Day, tail firmly planted between legs.

I’ve started to feel like my career is stalled, and I’m afraid that if I don’t do something to give it a jumpstart, I might permanently damage it. So I’m looking for wire service or newspaper jobs in New York and Washington, D.C.

There are many reasons why it’s difficult for me to write these words. First off, I told Bec that I’d be with her wherever she went. I also guaranteed I’d be in Cameroon for as long as her appointment goes. And I’m falling back on my word. In the long run, this is better. Publishing a story or two per month, I’m told, is pretty successful for someone living in backwaters like Rwanda and Cameroon. It just doesn’t feel that way. There are too many days where I feel like there’s nothing in front of me, and I don’t function well like that.

Next time we go abroad, and it’s going to happen, we both need to be working, and feeling like we’re being productive. I’ve always wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and that’s not going to change. But I don’t think I want to freelance anymore.

Second, I don’t like the idea of leaving Rebecca behind. She’s not coming back with me, and we don’t know when we’ll be together again. She’s got some work that she needs to finish here, and that could take awhile. As much as I need to jumpstart my career, she needs to keep working on hers. We need to get ourselves to similar levels, and this is probably the best, if most painful, way.

I keep thinking about how hard it’ll be for her to wake up one day and not find my stuff in the closet, and then come home to an empty house. I don’t like the idea of leaving her alone. It’s no fun, and will be extremely difficult. I feel like I’m abandoning her. At least going back to New York, I’ll have a lot of people there that I care about. Please don’t take this the wrong way. It’s not quite the same.

Bec feels guilty about the whole thing, which is just silly. I chose to come with her to Rwanda and Cameroon. I don’t think I evaluated the risks well, but that’s my fault. Everything I’ve accomplished here – and I recognize it has been a lot – is because of her. So she shouldn’t feel guilty at all. I feel indebted to her. In fact, I feel like I'm not tough enough to carry on here, and that doesn't feel good. This is all on me.

Third, I feel like I’ve lost. I’ve given freelancing my best shot, and I wanted to do it longer. When we came back from New York, I thought I’d make it to May and then reassess. But I don’t think I can. There are days when I feel like Sisyphus, and there are days where I feel like Indiana Jones. Except even on a lot of days when I feel like Indiana Jones, the giant stone ball crushes me. I thought freelancing would be easier, and if it wasn’t, I was good enough to make these countries interesting to editors. I was wrong, and losing is no fun.

Finally, I actually quite like Cameroon. We live comfortably in a comfortable place. We have Cameroonian friends I think the world of. The weather right now is gorgeous, cool, dry and sunny. It’s a shame I couldn’t generate more interest in Cameroon, but the country’s not bleeding, so it’s not leading.

Enough self-pity. This is the way it’s most likely going to be, and as much as it pains me to make this decision, in the long run it’s for the best.

So, why am I coming back on St. Patrick’s Day?

Well, I like Cameroon and don’t want to leave just yet, mostly. There are many places I want to go and things I want to do. Also, why go back early in the winter? Why not wait until spring is right around the corner? The hockey playoffs will be just around the corner also.

Most importantly, though, I want a freakin’ parade. So Maura, Kelly, anyone else with connections, get on the phone with Ancient Order of Hibernians. Tell them there’s a new grand marshal this year.

This decision does not mean I’ve stopped trying to make this work. I’m still writing for the Catholics (in fact, here’s a story I wrote last week Who’s this Catholic News Service guy?), and will have a pitch out to a major American paper tomorrow on the penal reform.

I haven’t bought a ticket yet, and plans could change. I could have a job earlier and leave earlier. Or a very preliminary discussion I’ve had could turn into a stringing relationship, and I could stay longer. Who knows?

But it looks much more like I’ll be back in March. Get the green beer ready.

December 29, 2006

Getting to Kribi involves driving Cameroon’s notorious inter-provincial roads. I’ll be honest. Of the many reasons I don’t travel as much as I’d like – distance between locations, days getting away from me, the vain hope that I might have stories to write among them – is the roads scare the bejesus out of me. I still remember one of the veteran correspondents I met in Uganda saying, “Everyone thinks the most dangerous part of reporting in Africa is going to unstable war zones. Really, it’s getting from place to place.”

I’ve written before about the Cameroonian government’s efforts to reduce the blood spilled on its highways. Apparently, it’s not working. I guess they can’t forcefully remove people’s heads from their butts.

Charles heroically did all the driving last weekend. Our first stop was Douala, Cameroon’s commercial capital and largest city, to pick up Paul and Laura. They had just arrived from Chicago the night before. We left early Saturday morning to avoid as many of the massive rigs hauling massive logs that slow traffic down and legitimately cause people to try to pass them on the winding two-way roads. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the trucks with the logs that are unbelievably big going unbelievably slow. I’d be far more freaked about the roads if they were trying to pick up speed. And I also don’t have a problem with people passing the tractor-trailers on the two-lane road. If we didn’t, Paul and Laura would probably still be waiting for us in Douala. It’s just that people pick the most inopportune times – on curves, near the crest of a hill – to do this. And that’s where the accidents happen.

Charles for the most part did his passing in a safe manner. Every once in a while, he’d have to jerk back into his lane because someone was coming head-on way too fast, but that was fairly rare.

I sat in the back seat, next to Bec, on the way to Douala. I was safely strapped into a seatbelt and in a relatively comfortable seat. There was traffic getting out of Yaoundé. Most people in Cameroon’s cities – and across much of Africa as well – still have family living in their ancestral villages. So a lot of people take Christmas as chance to get a bit of mom’s home cooking. When we passed by the bus station area, it was a zoo. There was the usual inability to take turns and wait, something I’ve noticed in Cameroon and other parts of Africa, and not just on the roads. There were tour buses backing into spots. There were traffic police in baby blue shirts and white pith helmets trying to get cars to move in an orderly manner, but to no avail. Taxis drove on the shoulder, and then cut off other cars when they could go no further. Jeeps tried to take up the entire road. Pedestrians walked behind the backing-in buses so they couldn’t go. All in all, a traffic nightmare.

As I said, the drive to Douala was a relatively peaceful three hours or so. There were few trucks on the road and only a few maniacs. I noticed black signs that looked a little like stick figures, almost like Keith Harring paintings, but standing still. On the first leg of our journey, I couldn’t figure out what they were.

Traffic was snarled again on Douala’s outskirts. Like in Yaoundé, there were many people heading back to the village. But then we saw the real reason for the backup, especially since we were going against traffic. A green Volkswagen pick-up, essentially a VW bus with the passenger section converted into a flatbed, probably attempted to wind his way through the traffic until it met the immovable object of a box truck. The VW had its grill rearranged in such a way that I can’t imagine the driver walked out under his own power. The blue box truck had a few scratches to its paint job. The accident managed to back up traffic for seemingly miles in both directions for hours. Cameroon needs a traffic copter.

I sat in the trunk going from Douala to Kribi, a two-hour jaunt. There were jump seats, unfortunately without seatbelts, so it was a lot like riding in the way back of the Party Wagon, only facing the side. Oh yeah, there was no foot well, so I had to sit in ever more creative positions and still, parts of my lower half that I didn’t know could fall asleep did. But riding in the back did have one benefit: I saw all the stuff we passed after we safely went by. That was a pleasant change.

I also managed to figure out what the black signs were: markers of where people died along the roads. I also started to notice the charred hulks of wrecked cars periodically dotting the landscape. Some were there so long they had been mostly reclaimed by the surrounding forests. The roads in southern Cameroon run through relatively dense rain forest, in various shades of green with rolling hills and a few tree-covered mountains sprouting up. Charles pointed out that much of the forest around the road had been chopped down already, and that these were second-growth plants. We’d occasionally pass patches of scarred landscape where the second growth was clear-cut and burned, with fresh fires still lapping and crackling. It’s sad to see, but people have to eat, right.

I could see the water and beach of Kribi from the side of the car I was facing. It was gorgeous. Stretches of blue pulling out from the white beach, shrouded a bit by swaying palms and other trees. Delicious. We passed a public park with wide expanses of green for people to play football (soccer to you and me) and have picnics, complete with beach access. Many families were out enjoying the sun, an altogether idyllic sight.

I wrote about our trip and won’t bore you anymore. I rode in the trunk again on the way back to Yaoundé. I wanted to sit back and listen to my iPod, mostly Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, since they manage to capture the mood rolling through the Cameroonian countryside better than anyone else. I found this to be the case driving through Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi as well. Plus, there was the benefit of seeing what didn’t hit us after it didn’t hit us.

I noticed one last bit of the Cameroonian campaign to promote road safety. Along with the black signs are smaller ones that say “32 people died here,” or whatever the number was in that spot. And then I thought about why this campaign may not be working as well as the authorities might like. Most likely, people don’t pay attention. Or if they do, they think, that’s too bad, but it won’t happen to me. I think that’s the same for every road safety campaign throughout the world.

But there are some technical problems. The black signs are a little conceptual for most people. You need a second to think about them. Maybe they should be streaked with red or twisted in unnatural positions or missing a leg. And the signs advertising the number of people who died at a particular curve are too small. You have to really look at them to see what they say. Well, that hardly seems safe. It might even explain some of the freshly crumpled cars rolled onto their sides in ditches next to those signs. I think they should be bigger, like American highway road signs or billboards. “SLOW DOWN. THIRTY-TWO PEOPLE DIED IN AN ACCIDENT ON THIS SPOT,” in five-foot tall letters would probably work a lot better.

Maybe I should be the minister of transport. I’ve got the time.

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Apparently, Another Day in Shrimpistan is picked up in Google’s survey of blogs about Cameroon. Who knew my reach was so global. Get more people to come back, because the more hits, the higher I might be in their alert.

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On that happy note, Bonne Annee, mes amis. Don’t worry; we’re staying in Yaoundé to celebrate. Talk to you all next year.

December 28, 2006

Yesterday was an exciting day. I went down to the market and bought new flip-flops. Yup, life in Cameroon is a thrill a minute.

That said, Bec and I returned Tuesday from spending Christmas on the beach. That sentence is a bit misleading. We did have a room, so we were able to get off the beach occasionally. I will say this: it was lovely spending Christmas in flip-flops and shorts rather than freezing my butt off, although it sounds like the New York area is feeling the pleasant effects of global warming this year. I don’t know what everyone’s complaining about.

We went to Kribi, which is on the Gulf of Guinea coast. Since I’ve described Cameroon as the armpit of Africa, Kribi is that pleasant part of the body where armpit gently edges into a person’s side. With us were our friends Charles and Ruth, their son Paul and his wife Laura. Charles and Ruth, if you haven’t guessed, are significantly older than us.

Kribi is delightfully underdeveloped. There’s electricity and paved roads. But there aren’t massive Hilton resorts or Club Meds along the beach. Instead, the hotels are much smaller structures, none more than two or three stories tall and decked out in the whites and pale pastels one expects from a beach community. They’re nicely spaced out and all have the easygoing vibe people want when they’re on vacation. Sure, there isn’t non-stop entertainment. But you aren’t sharing the beach with a thousand strangers either.

Our hotel, the Tara Plage, was just south of Kribi’s town center. It was a cluster of eight rooms spread between two buildings with an open bar area doubling as the reception desk. The bar opened on to a covered verandah, which then led directly to the beach. Despite all the problems with oil extraction, the rigs and platforms and pipeline terminals around 20 miles out provided beautiful lights at night. Jealous yet?

So, what did we do during our three days in the sun? Well, this being Shrimpistan, we ate shrimp. Lots and lots of them, and they were pulled straight from the water and plopped on our plates. We also ate other fish that was fresh-caught, including barracuda. Consider that vengeance for the time you went snorkeling and were confronted by a fleet of them, Dad. I probably have so much mercury in me that you can use my toe to take your temperature. But use your mouth, please.

We competitively lounged. The goal of the game was to see who could do less over the course of the day. I figured that since I have the most expertise at this of the people we were with, I would give everyone a head start. It’s no fun dominating when you know the other players don’t have a chance. I finished one book and read the better part of another. I lounged in a beach chair. I slept in said beach chair. I swam in the gulf.

I spent a great deal of time watching the lizards – Cameroon’s answer to squirrels. These are fascinating creatures, chomping on bugs so I don’t have to squish them. Some are colorful – there’s one especially attractive lizard with a Halloween-orange head, grey to black body and orange tail with a black tip. Others are just green. They don’t run so much as skitter, with short, choppy movements that almost look like stop-motion animation straight out of the original King Kong. They don’t bother people at all. They simply skitter, look for bugs, do what look like push-ups and climb trees, occasionally falling out of them with a splat into the sand and a confused look. I could watch them for hours. Actually, I did.

The Gulf of Guinea waters deserve their own special mention. They are pleasantly warm, like a salty bathtub. Sure, I went running out of the water when seaweed touched me. But I had just been reading about the silent, sudden death of saltwater crocodile attacks and I was a little on edge. Sure, there are no saltwater crocodiles on the west coast of Africa, but you can never be too safe. Fine, I’m a sissy.

We attended a traditional French reveillance on Christmas Eve, hosted by the Tara Plage’s French owner. A traditional French reveillance basically consists of eating. Course after course – ooohhh, squid salad, mmmm, fried shrimp, what’s that? Beef filet, chicken gizzard salad? ewwwwww – came out seemingly without stop. Dinner lasted from 8 to 12:30 and culminated with a beach bonfire.

“Why do they have a bonfire?” Bec asked, somewhat befuddled.

“Because they do,” I said.

The only trouble came to paradise on Christmas Day, when the hotel’s water pump broke. After a relatively long walk on the beach, Bec and I wanted to rinse off our feet before lunch. No luck.

Later in the day, we went for a swim (where I courageously fought off the aforementioned seaweed) and then splayed out on the loungers, sleeping and reading. Paul then came out and said, “They’ve fixed the pump!” I think every guest at the hotel went to his or her showers at once.

I chivalrously let Bec go first. I’ll be honest. She was far more vocally concerned about the lack of showering than I was. So in she went. I thought I heard the water pressure waning a bit, but figured that was from the large number of people showering at once. “You might want to give it a minute before you go in,” she warned. I kept reading.

After a chapter or two, I went to the shower. Figuring that I didn’t want to get all soapy and then be stuck with only toilet water at my disposal, I let the water run for a minute or two. It started with two streams of water, then went down to one, then went down to none. I stepped back out and got dressed, impressively steaming for someone unable to get wet.

“You know, there are times I don’t like being in the developing world,” I said to Bec. She then proceeded to give me helpful bathing tips. “Get one part soapy, then rinse off, then move to the next.” I finally said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
So, we went back out to enjoy one last sunset, which were never as spectacular as we hoped. As I wrote in my journal, I remembered that all life began in the ocean. It felt as if the conditions to create new, single celled organisms were present in the crevices of my body as I sat and stewed. Fortunately, evolution is slow and the mutations stopped at algae by the time I showered after dinner.

I am pleased to report that I did not get sunburned, and even actually picked up a bit of a tan. Take that, sun.

Going to a resort in the developing world is always a fraught experience for me. To be honest, I often feel a little guilty. For the most part, the only locals I see at these resorts are the ones hawking trinkets on the beach, cleaning the rooms or scurrying off to get me another beer. Now, I recognize that all of these are legitimate professions and that these Cameroonians/Khmer/Thais, etc. might not have a job or way to feed their families if I wasn’t enjoying the time at the beach.

To be fair, there were a few well-off Cameroonians hanging out at the beach with us. And the French guy who ran the place all had Cameroonian wives and children. But at the same time, it just feels imperial in a way that makes me slightly uncomfortable.

Then again, the beer sometimes comes out slow, and I stop worrying about imperialism.